Restaurants

With plenty of exciting restaurant openings constantly taking place across the Capital, here’s our pick of the best new restaurants arriving in London over the coming month. Sakagura - Mayfair Joining the likes of Momo and Gordon Ramsay’s Heddon Street Kitchen, just behind Regent Street, Sakagura is the latest restaurant opening from The Japan Centre Group. Opening in collaboration with the team behind two Michelin-starred The Araki, the restaurant will have a Southern Japanese focus and will mainly serve ‘Washoku’ and Hakata Yakitori skewers....

The great British pub is almost dead and I, for one, am unhappy. A few weeks ago, I visited Avebury’s The Red Lion Inn – the only pub within an ancient stone circle, built during the 1600s. Ten years ago, it was impossible to leave without having been filled with great cask ale, honest pub grub and scintillating conversation with nomads, druids, vagabonds, spiritualists and hikers. Now, having been taken over by Old English Inns, the pub’s décor has about...

It is a subject that I’ve touched upon before, but after four years, the thought of paying in excess of £30 to visit the top of The Shard still baffles me. Indeed, the view across the city is exceptional, providing that the weather is clear and the clouds are higher than the 800-foot viewing platform. However, the main view to be excited about is that of the city’s other very close skyscrapers, Canary Wharf, Parliament, the London Eye and maybe...

In this modern-day world of inescapable food fads and single menu demi-chains dominating London’s restaurant scene; the notion of visiting a British institution for dinner is actually somewhat refreshing. First opened in 1828, Simpson’s-in-the-Strand is located within The Savoy hotel and looks as though very little has been changed over the past 188 years. Inside, guests are greeted and whisked through to the vast dining space adorned with dark wood panelled walls, expectedly high ceilings, heavily starched linen and a...

There’s something about a ‘City dining experience’ that I find very enticing. The concept conjures up notions of a Mad Men-esque lifestyle pushing ice cubes around a crystal glass of Scotch in some fancy boardroom before clinking flutes of Champagne in a high end bar and topping it off with an extravagant meal in an exclusive restaurant. It chimes of a day when work and play were more intermingled in the cosmopolitan parts of the World, and no one can...

With the popularity of Mexican food having soared in recent years, it’s disappointing yet unsurprising that we’ve been subjected to so many culinary atrocities that pretend to be Mexican. In fact, thanks to a plague of simply foul Tex-Mex chain restaurants operating across the capital, many city dwellers have been led to believe that Americanised soggy burritos, crispy taco shells and lactic guacamole are the pinnacle of Mexican cooking. Operating from a neglected thoroughfare between Euston station and Camden Town,...

The first thing about the Rosendale pub, in West Dulwich, is it should have been my local. I, violin out time, tried to buy a flat on the same road, but got outbid. So I joined the ever-increasing ranks of 30-odd-year-old Londoners who failed to become homeowners. Anyway there is more to life than owning stuff, but I do regret not having this pub on my doorstop. Drinking alcohol and eating great cuisine is far more important than bricks and...

With plenty of exciting restaurant openings constantly taking place across the Capital, here’s our pick of the best new restaurants arriving in London over the coming month. M RAW - Victoria Having launched his second branch of M in Victoria Street last year, ex-Gaucho MD Martin Williams is set to launch M RAW – London’s first 100 per-cent gluten-free fine dining establishment – under the venue’s same roof this month. Since opening, M Victoria Street has been shortlisted as ‘Best New Opening 2016’ in...

Venturing out at the weekend for brunch has become incredibly popular in recent years, but with such a great number of restaurants jumping on board, so many of the menus have become implausibly predictable. First there are the various perfunctory takes on Eggs Benedict, from classic Royale and Florentine through to less authentic strands that employ the likes of pulled pork, or substitute English muffins with waffles. When “brunching” it’s also difficult to escape outbreaks of avocado pandemic and jugs...