A new wagyu-specialist Japanese restaurant opens in Mayfair next week which is expected to charge an astonishing £750 per person for a meal with wine. Aragawa, on Clarges Street, is the first European branch of a restaurant that originated in 1956 in Kobe, capital of Hyogo prefecture, and home of the best wagyu cattle – it […]
Former Pétrus head chef Larry Jayasekara has teamed up with photographic art gallerist Tim Jefferies to open his first restaurant as patron, The Cocochine in Mayfair. Opening this month, the restaurant is small but lavishly appointed, with “old school” touches such as booking by phone only, no turning of tables and a fully à la […]
Prominent Notting Hill pub the Walmer Castle is to reopen on November 1 under new ownership – its third in quick succession after a turbulent few years. The new owners are Jack and Poppy Greenall, who also own The Surprise in Chelsea – another handsome mid-Victorian tavern – and are working to resurrect it as a “traditional community […]
High-end omakase dining arrives in Hampstead this month with the opening of restaurant Iné, from the team behind Taku in Mayfair. Named after the Japanese for the rice plant before it is harvested, Iné will offer a 15-course omakase (“leave it to the chef”) meal along with a full sushi and sashimi menu at an […]
A new European-style café that morphs into an evening cocktail bar opens near the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden next Thursday, 12 October. Baudry Greene is the latest offering on Endell Street from Will Palmer and Ian Campbell, who also run 10 Cases wine bar and Parsons fish restaurant there – both of which earn […]
Changes are afoot in the culinary offerings available on Piccadilly, with historic brasserie Richoux moving out and contemporary wellness café Volonté moving in this week. Century-old Richoux was bought out of administration two years ago and relaunched by chefs Jamie Butler and Lewis Spencer, who now plan to move it to Soho next year. They […]
The team behind London restaurant Fallow is launching an upmarket low-waste ethical chicken shop called Fowl next week in St James’s Market. Occupying the former Cubitt House pub the Beau Brummell, Fowl opens with a guest collaboration from the great and semi-retired French chef Pierre Koffmann, who has created a Chicken Leg Corn Dog with Aleppo Pepper (pictured) […]
Chef Merlin Labron-Johnson has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds so his high-achieving but tiny Somerset restaurant, Osip, can move into new, much larger premises. The new Osip will be a “country auberge” offering accommodation as well as meals, set in a restored historical building in the countryside a few miles from the current […]
Ana Gonçalves and Zijun Meng, the chef couple behind the long-running East-meets-West project TATA Eatery , will open their new restaurant Solis in Battersea on October 4 – and this time it is Iberia meets Uruguay. The 80-cover venue is the final addition to the Arcade Battersea food hall, which opened this summer in the former […]
A new West African restaurant is to open next month in a railway arch next to Borough Market. Akara is Aji Akokomi’s more casual follow-up to his acclaimed Fitzrovia flagship, Akoko. The new venue is named after the crispy West African fritters made from black-eyed beans which will be served as starters, stuffed with prawns […]