Chef Rowley Leigh is making his comeback to the kitchen at the age of 74 this month, working alongside executive chef Mahdi Chawki at the Don restaurant in the City of London. Rowley, who made his name at Le Poulbot, Kensington Place and Le Café Anglais, has designed a menu based on classic simplicity and […]
Veteran chef Rowley Leigh is making a comeback at the age of 73 with a three-month pop-up bistro called Chez Rowley, which opens next month in Notting Hill. He describes the venture as “a bistro with nostalgic dishes and classic technique at its heart designed to be enjoyed family style. The true show stopper, poulet […]
A couple brought together by the chef and writer Rowley Leigh are to open a country farmhouse restaurant-with-rooms near Deal in Kent next month. Updown Farm is a grade II-listed 17th-century farmhouse set in seven acres that has been refurbished in the past four years by Ruth Leigh – Rowley’s daughter – and Oliver Brown, who trained […]
Three London restaurants closed last week after their parent company went into administration. Parabola at the Design Museum, Luytens, a casual, lunch-friendly bistro, and Clerkenwell’s British restaurant Albion all closed with immediate effect on June 20. The closure involves three restaurants owned by Sir Terence and Lady Conran, and Peter Prescott. The Conran family will […]
Theatreland’s stalwart American diner Joe Allen (a survivor of the ’70s) is to move lock, stock and wood panelling this summer. The restaurant and all its fixtures and fittings will take up a new home, just 25 metres down the road, in Burleigh Street, Covent Garden. Retaining the recognisable wood panelling, classic theatre posters and […]
Theatreland favourite Joe Allen is to celebrate its 40th anniversary with an appropriately star-studded line-up of alumni and guests on Sunday January 29. Rowley Leigh will return to the pass in the kitchen where he started out, flanked by food writers Gizzi Erskine and Lisa Markwell, with TV personality Christopher Biggins meeting and greeting on the door and […]
⦿ The Observer’s Jay Rayner reviewed Sambal Shiok, Mandy Yin’s Malaysian evenings-only pop-up at Blend café in Harringay, where he was impressed by the Singapore-style laksa. “Boy, is it good. The broth is thick, making it more a stew than a soup. It is the Fisher-Price Activity Centre of food, with just so much to see and do and […]