Restaurants

With plenty of exciting restaurant launches constantly taking place across the Capital, we pick London’s best new restaurants opening over the coming month. The Frog Hoxton – Hoxton Following the success of his other restaurants, The Frog E1 and Frog by Adam Handling, Adam Handling is set to open a brand new space on Hoxton Square. Opening later this month, The Frog E1 will move to a new, larger premises (renamed The Frog Hoxton), joined by a new bar, Iron...

Situated in a  Chelsea townhouse, Tom’s Kitchen is empty when we arrive - a mere half an hour after opening for service on an early summer’s evening. While each of the restaurant’s four floors had been fully booked over the course of the Chelsea Flower Show, today we have our choice of tables. We opt for a table  by the open kitchen, which exudes a reassuring hum into the cosy ground floor. The dark panelled walls are a proud canvas,...

After Simon Rogan parted company with Fera at Claridges last year, London suffered a brief, unquenchable thirst for the much celebrated cooking served at the chef’s two Michelin starred L'Enclume in Cumbria. (Apart from the eight-seat Aulis in Soho, serving a £195 tasting menu). With L’Enclume, the chef was simply a big fish in a comparatively small pond; not to detract from the restaurant’s brilliance. With the recent opening of Roganic - on Blandford Street, just off Marylebone High Street...

Do your culinary tastes run toward the more exotic, like pita sandwiches with three cheeses and pesto or a roasted onion tart with creme fraiche?  Or are they more traditional, like the Shackburger? Do you like a modern atmosphere, or one steeped in history like a restaurant that’s really a bank vault? “Either way, these choices are sure to be a foodie’s delight, “ said Blair Nicole of Liberty Cruise NYC, a sightseeing cruise that travels around New York Harbor. Jack's Stir...

Fine dining is fine, but wholesome country cooking is the heart and soul of French cuisine. Humble, hearty dishes generally served in French homes; prepared for hungry family members rather than Instagram gratification. Although haute cuisine has become so synonymous with France, every successful French chef will have one of these recipes in their armoury, often passed down through generations. Duck confit, piperade, ratatouille, bouillabaisse, cassoulet. A provincial region in the south-west of the country, Gascony is, arguably, the spiritual...

Over the past four years, the Selfridges rooftop space has been utilised throughout the summer, taken over by Des McDonald Restaurants. This year, the department store’s fifth floor terrace is, once again, home to another restaurant; now overseen by San Carlo – the group behind Fumo, Cicchetti and Gran Café at Selfridges in Birmingham and Manchester. Accessible via an express lift on the ground floor (close to the main entrance, off Oxford Street), alto by San Carlo is prefaced with...

One of London’s smartest hotels, The Ned was greeted with sonic hysteria when it took over the Sir Edwin Lutyens-designed former Midland Bank HQ last year. A playboy’s playground in the heart of the Square Mile, Soho House’s landed cruise ship is spread across eight storeys, with 250 hotel rooms, a private members’ club, a spa and 10 restaurants. Joining the likes of Asian-Pacific Kaia, Malibu Kitchen and a branch of Cecconi’s, Zobler’s Deli & Diner is, perhaps, the hotel’s...

On a balmy Summer’s afternoon in Rome, a reasonable lunch time had passed. Having traversed the city’s cobbled streets for the past six hours, fuelled on a breakfast of five espressos, I was irritably hungry. All of the restaurants littering the plazas surrounding the Pantheon had one key similarity: an overzealous waitress perched outside, attempting to reel potential customers through the door like prized Marlins. “Do you know James Blunt?” One particular waitress asked, presenting a blurry photograph taken with...

The only three Michelin starred restaurant in Madrid, David Muñoz opened DiverXO in 2007. The restaurant was quickly succeeded by the nearby opening of a less formal sister restaurant, StreetXO – an establishment with an off the wall, highly conceptualised menu. Nine years later, Muñoz brought his fine dining circus to London, launching StreetXO on Old Burlington Street, Mayfair. With a less formal atmosphere than DiverXO, StreetXO in London showcases the chef’s unconventional cooking style in an equally eccentric setting....