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. Brigadiers - City The latest restaurant from JKS Restaurants (BAO, XU, Sabor), Brigadiers will open within the Bloomberg Arcade next week. An Indian barbecue restaurant and drinking tavern, Brigadiers will house two designated bars: Blighters and The Tap Room, with a whisky vending machine, on-tap cocktails, Champagne and punch fountains, and fast-pour pints from self-serve beer taps....

British food is having a moment. As Londoners continue to embark on punishing quests for the new and exciting, promises of classic British comfort food have become something of a comfort blanket for so many of us. James Durrant’s The Game Bird opened within The Stafford Hotel last year and quickly garnered praise for its archetypal menu of refined comfort food; boasting the likes of steak and ale steamed suet pudding, whole dover sole and at least one type of...

The venison puffs at Hakkasan are a thing of beauty: mouthfuls of unequivocal brilliance. Insalubriously buttery, the pastry parcels (made with lard) are brushed with honey, smattered with a torrent of sesame seeds. Inside, hunks of venison have inherently rich flavour naturally remarkable with the honey and sesame, rampant with Chinese five spice. The filling is coated with a thick sauce that’s sweet, savoury, umami, delicious. Each bite is transcendent: an explosion of expertly amalgamated flavours. “The venison puff is...

When Dabbous closed, I felt bereft. Ollie Dabbous had cooked (or at least been involved with) some of the best meals I’d eaten. Ever. I longed and longed for the restaurant’s unique model of fine dining to fill the gaping hole in my heart and rumbling stomach. The restaurant and its eponymous chef’s cooking style has since been imitated, but never matched. Soon after the closure of Dabbous, Ollie worked on the launch of Henrietta in Covent Garden, but the...

What’s in a restaurant name, and does it really matter in this day and age? At the time of writing, London is home to more than 39,000 restaurants, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that so many struggle to conjure an appropriate title. Last year, Flavour Bastard managed to ruffle feathers with its opening in Soho, largely condemned for its name and boundary pushing fusion food. Along with now renamed Pussey Liquor and Sexy Fish, the respective restaurateurs appear to have been...

Vegetables are everywhere in 2018. Once considered the sole reserve of vegetarians and vegans, meat and fish-free cooking has become so revolutionised it’s no longer a constant source of taboo for staunch meat eaters. At long last, mushroom burgers and slices of neoprene, masquerading as cheese, are becoming a thing of the past. Tapping into London’s long overdue appreciation of vegetable-centric cooking, Tom Oldroyd’s eponymous Islington restaurant has launched ‘Meat Free Mondays’. A pocket-sized space on Upper Street, Oldroyd serves...

In 2004 a group of native Londoners pooled their expertise to create an ultimate guide to the capital, pointing out the places that must be seen and those that should be avoided. Included as the fourth of five tips filed under the latter category was "never, ever eat at an Angus Steak House". It may seem like an appropriate British treat, but as David Mitchell was to point out later, only because we have a "proud heritage of serving shoe...

The Square Mile has a different, prettier, face at the weekend. A playground for bumbling business men during the other five days of the week, this part of the city becomes unpredictably sedate at seven o’clock each Friday, as the wolves of Wormwood Street return to Kent and Essex. Come Friday evening, however, City Social springs to life. A high-rise restaurant from chef-turned-restaurateur Jason Atherton, City Social has been operating from the 24th floor of Tower 42 for the past...

A restaurant for people who simply love food, St. JOHN is a rare Michelin starred gastro temple without redundant affectation.