Restaurants

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.

Exit Vauxhall Station at the foot of the bridge and head west, following the path of the Thames. Pass the 50 storey glass syringe, trailing the road to the right as it forks onto Nine Elms Lane and keep walking; crossing the invisible border between Lambeth and Wandsworth. Lapse the blocks of flats veiled with trailing ivy and the new (controversially located) American Embassy. Keep walking. The road then continues its winding tour of unaffordable industrial rubble. Keep walking. Past...

With plenty of exciting restaurant openings constantly taking place across the Capital, we pick London’s best new restaurant openings taking place over the coming month.   Kricket – Brixton In 2015, Kricket opened as one of the main food offerings at POP Brixton and quickly garnered critical acclaim. Almost two years later, however, the restaurant closed, with all of founders Rik Campbell and Chef Will Bowlby’s attention focussed on a larger Soho site. Following the resounding success of the Soho restaurant,...

According to a recent survey from Columbia University, adults make at least 70 decisions each day. Some are important, but others are completely futile, eventually leading to a “phenomenon” known as brain fatigue. While life is filled with big decisions, demanding to be carefully mulled over, others are completely futile. Overbearing restaurant menus are a key offender in relation to brain fatigue. How many precious minutes of your life have been spent cross examining a restaurant menu with 10, 15,...

Earlier this month, Martin Morales announced plans to open Andina Panaderia - London’s first Peruvian bakery. Capitalising on the booming popularity of Peruvian cuisine in London at the moment, the bakery will open alongside a new restaurant (Andina Picanteria) and specialise in slow-ferment baking with breads and pastries such as Andean black mint and sweet potato sourdough, and Chicha morada muffins made with purple corn; harbouring a corn and almond centre. The paint has barely dried, but it’s already clear...

Hām is not another single-menu restaurant, although you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Instead, ‘Hām’ is the Old English word for ‘home’, a prominent focus at this new West Hampstead neighbourhood restaurant, far more so than cured pork leg. Nestled amongst a parade of restaurants and charity shops, the restaurant’s space is modern but welcoming, and the service strikes a rare balance between casual and proficient. I arrive ten minutes early and find deep comfort in an insouciant attentiveness...

If you’re going to insist on opening a restaurant specialising in one specific dish, it’s a matter of good manners to do that one thing properly. As a result, I’m constantly flummoxed at the news of so many London steakhouses celebrating double-figure anniversaries. To order a steak in a non-specialist restaurant can seem like a cop out; generally included on menus as the sole reserve of the unadventurous, “well-done please”, picky eater. But when done well, in the right setting,...

West London has no shortage of Lebanese restaurants, but few are quite like Abd el Wahab. First opened in Beirut at the end of the 1990s, the Abd el Wahab restaurant group (named after the address of its original location - ‘Abd el Wahab El Inglizi’) now oversees popular restaurants across the Middle East, including Bahrain, Qatar, Cairo, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The first restaurant outside the Arab region has recently opened, taking over a premises on Pont Street in...