Mercato Metropolitano (MM) Ilford will finally open next month – five years after first being announced. The wood-framed structure (pictured above during the construction) set in a disused car park in the town’s ‘cultural quarter’ offers street-food entrepreneurs the opportunity to showcase their cooking in a communal food hall – and is part of the regeneration of […]
A Japanese restaurant that has made a big splash in Taiwan and mainland China will open its first UK site in Soho’s Wardour Street next month. Kanpai Classic specialises in yakinuku, with customers cooking meat and vegetables themselves on a table-top grill. The grilling options will be led by a choice of 10 cuts of […]
JKS Restaurants is to open a large and ambitious new Indian restaurant – their first in five years – in Mayfair this September. Ambassadors Clubhouse is taking over the Heddon Street premises occupied by Moroccan restaurant Momo until 2020, and will feature a ‘maximalist central bar with a gold dome’ in the main dining room. The 140-cover […]
Florentine comfort food concept Dez Amore opens its first permanent restaurant next week, on a corner site in Chelsea with a retro-modern look inspired by Italy in the 1970s. Launched by two friends from Florence, Leonardo Masi and Simone Parentini (pictured), Dez Amore lays claim to a ‘double soul’ that combines traditional Italian cooking with […]
Irina Linovich’s vegetable-focused project Holy Carrot will open its first bricks and mortar restaurant in Notting Hill next month, with a ‘fire and ferment’-based menu from chef Daniel Watkins, co-founder of Dalston’s ACME Fire Cult. Irina launched Holy Carrot four years ago with a series of supper-club dinners, and the permanent site aims to show […]
Dubai-based Chinese restaurant Shanghai Me is to take over the Galvin brothers’ former Windows perch on the 28th storey of the Park Lane Hilton, as London’s oldest skyscraper hotel reshuffles its dining offer. In the second part of the reshuffle, Amsterdam steakhouse group Mr Porter is moving in to the lower ground floor site occupied […]
Mayfair restaurateur Samyukta Nair (left in photo) opens her latest restaurant, Koyn Thai, in collaboration with Bangkok-born chef Rose Chalalai Singh (centre) this Sunday, 16 June. The restaurant is taking over the basement dining room of Samyukta’s Japanese restaurant Koyn, off Grosvenor Square, with Koyn executive chef Rhys Cattermoul (right) running the kitchen. Each restaurant […]
The River Café, Ruth Rogers’s iconic Italian restaurant overlooking the Thames near Hammersmith, has opened a café next door – and yes, they’ve called it The River Café Café. The new café, which launched this week, is open every day from 9am until 10pm (4pm Sundays, closed on Mondays), serving an all-day Italian menu prepared by […]
Odette’s in Primrose Hill is to be reborn as Home Kitchen, a social enterprise fine-dining restaurant staffed by homeless people, under the direction of executive chef Adam Simmonds (centre in picture). Odette’s closed down suddenly at the end of May after a run of almost 50 years as one of London’s best-known and most atmospheric […]
International Korean chef Akira Back makes his London debut at the new Mandarin Oriental hotel in Hanover Square, Mayfair, next Wednesday, 3 June – more than two years after it it was announced. He will operate two restaurants – Akira Back (pictured), reinterpreting Korean and Japanese dishes, and Dosa, a 14-seat chef’s table offering contemporary Korean […]
