Street food residency settles down around the corner from Smokestak There’s a well-worn, well-thumbed playbook to opening a restaurant in London serving a previously unknown, or at least little known, cuisine. Choose a name that sounds suitably ‘exotic’, yet isn’t too hard to spell and is preferably based on one of your chosen cuisine’s landmark … Continue reading
But don’t tell that to the Nuno Mendes fanboys Update 10/4/18 – added a few new sentences to the conclusion. When you’re one of London’s most feted chefs, responsible for smash hits like the Chiltern Firehouse and Taberna do Mercado, then there’s only one thing left for you to do. You open a secretive supper … Continue reading
It’s tempting to dismiss Brat out of hand before you’ve even laid eyes on the place. It’s situated above the newly relocated Smoking Goat in Shoreditch, which makes it sound like the hospitality equivalent of a grubby bedsit or a suffocating flatshare. The kitchen is headed up by Tomos Parry, formerly of the lauded Kitty … Continue reading
Not quite the Barrafina 2.0 you were hoping for I try not to write too much about the personalities in London’s restaurant business for many reasons. But when two of the people behind Barrafina, the capital’s landmark tapas mini-chain, strike out on their own then I can’t help but sit up and take notice. Nieves … Continue reading
Slumming it in Mayfair for South Asian haute cuisine giggles Pitting Gymkhana against Indian Accent seems like such a natural thing to do. Both are pricey high-end Indian restaurants on the same street in Mayfair, located mere yards apart from each other. And yet the outcome almost seems like such a forgone conclusion. In one … Continue reading
In this case ‘casual’ means ‘cheaper’. Sort of. It’s always fascinating to see what happens when a lauded, Michelin-starred fine-dining restaurant launches a ‘casual’ spin-off. When Dabbous attempted it, the result was the very different and somewhat odd Barnyard. Both of those restaurants have now closed and, in retrospect, Barnyard felt a somewhat patronising, phoned-in … Continue reading
Southwest London doesn’t know how lucky it really is Menus may look like an innocuous list of dishes and prices to most people. But, unless they’ve been written on the fly by a sleep-deprived proprietor teetering on the edge of alcoholism, they can be a far more calculated, insidious instrument designed to subtly serve the … Continue reading
