Björn Frantzén, the Swedish superstar chef whose Stockholm flagship was this week pronounced No 6 in the World’s 50 Best Restaurant awards, is to open his first UK restaurant in Harrods next year. Last month Frantzén came second in another international contest, the Best Chef awards. Ashley Saxton, general manager of restaurants at Harrods, said it […]

Continue reading


Poutine is having a moment in London, with the opening of two new restaurants that put the legendary Quebecois take on chips at the centre of their offering. West 4th in Parson’s Green, named after Vancouver’s West 4th Avenue shopping and dining thoroughfare, is an all-day brunch restaurant that turns into a wine bar by […]

Continue reading


When our reporters praise Bray’s Hind’s Head it is because the picturesque pub is “thankfully not over-Hestoned” but The Sunday Times’s Lisa Markwell has the opposite problem – she can’t find any evidence of Blumenthal’s pseudo-scientific cooking at all, nor the influence of his trusty lieutenant Ashley Palmer-Watts – and it leaves her disappointed… “I […]

Continue reading


Three-year-old pop-up The Oystermen is to open its first permanent venue in Covent Garden this summer. The Oystermen seafood bar and kitchen will be in foodie hot-spot Henrietta Street, where Ollie Dabbous has just opened his new restaurant in The Henrietta hotel and Gregory Marchand opened Frenchie last year. Unusually, The Oystermen is a business that […]

Continue reading


Ikoyi, an upmarket new restaurant showcasing the cuisine of West Africa, is to open in July in the new St James’s Market just south of Piccadilly Circus. It is a joint venture from school friends Iré Hassan-Odukale (pictured left), who was born in Ikoye, a cosmopolitan area of Lagos in Nigeria, and chef Jeremy Chan (right), whose […]

Continue reading


One of London’s leading Japanese restaurants since it opened in Marylebone in 2006, Dinings is to launch a sister venue in Knightsbridge next month. Dinings SW3 aims to fuse Japanese tradition with European seafood bar culture, offering plateaux de fruits de mer fresh from Cornish dayboats, plus robata-style cuisine using a Josper grill, with a seasonal sake list […]

Continue reading


Two young female chefs are opening their first restaurant, Lupins, next month in the Flat Iron Square food hub, a short walk from Borough Market in Southwark. Lucy Pedder and Natasha Cooke met in the kitchen at Medlar in Chelsea, and worked together at the Sands End in Fulham and Cross Keys in Chelsea before […]

Continue reading