Restaurants

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food Famous for its bustling restaurant and street food scene, Shoreditch has been sadly devoid of wholesome, reasonably priced Spanish food – until now. Having opened earlier this year, the Shoreditch branch of Tapas Revolution is the third from chef Omar Allibhoy, and the first stand-alone spot, with restaurants already open in Westfield Shepherd’s Bush and Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent. Striving to continue the mission of bringing his own interpretation of tapas bars to...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food If the opening of higher-end restaurants from city lunch break outlets such as Pret A Manger and PAUL, over the past year or so, are anything to go by, it looks as though this increasingly popular step will become a huge food trend for 2016. In which case, it’s probably just a matter of time before EAT, itsu and Wasabi begin to introduce an a la carte menu, waiting staff and a dinner service....

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food It comes as no surprise that five of the six new pubs included in Michelin’s Eating Out In Pubs Guide for 2016 are in West London. While most classic London pub ideals are based on those in the East end, but when it comes to great 21st century London pubs, plenty have been cropping up in the West over the past couple of years, and now there’s a brand new contendor to rival such...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food Just seconds from Mayfair’s Grosvenor Square, sandwiched between Oxford Street and Berkely Square, Avista holds one of the most prestigious dining destinations in central London. Opened as a rustic yet contemporary Italian restaurant a few years ago, the a la carte menu is now particularly contemporary, matched with an impressive wine list of mainly Italian fine wines. Many of the area’s higher-end Italian restaurants are remarkably pretentious, but thankfully this is not the case...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food 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. Big Easy Bar.B.Q & Lobstershack – Canary Wharf Opening new restaurant that’s "reminiscent of a turn of the century dock-side warehouse with all the intrigue and excitement of goods shipped from Southern states of America and the rest of the world", Big Easy Bar.B.Q & Lobstershack will be arriving at Canary...

Canary Wharf. The beating, high-rise heart of financial London, complete with expertly thought-out amenities, artisan food trucks and carefully-placed art 'for character'. If the food trucks don't take your fancy, nor the chain restaurants, there's a new option in town just a 10-minute walk away (or a 15-minute walk in circles and a £7 cab for those who aren't familiar with the semi-pedestrianised, water-enclosed money-jungle). It's Bella Cosa. Situated past the South Quay DLR on the riverside itself, the new restaurant makes...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food For as long as there have been restaurants, there have been the most outrageous of restaurant trends. Let’s face it; London is full of annoying impositions that surround our most social expeditions for something to eat. All too often we have to pretend to enjoy scraping sauce from materials more fit to tile a bathroom floor. It’s got to the stage where us city dwellers have to pretend that it’s enjoyable to shout at...

By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food With the grand re-opening of The Fat Duck, statistically one of the globe’s finest restaurants, there’s a great deal of excitement within the West Berkshire village of Bray at the moment. In fact, there’s such a great deal of hype that the taxi driver who picks us up from Maidenhead train station automatically assumes that we need a lift to Heston Blumenthal’s pride and joy. He even seems quite disappointed that we’ve actually come...

Photo: Paul Winch-Furness By Jonathan Hatchman, Food Editor, @TLE_Food Re-opened earlier this year in time to celebrate its centenary in 2017, The Ivy – London’s most famous restaurant and one of the city’s most prominent celeb haunts – has been refurbished and brought up to date (well, kind of) featuring a prominent central bar as well as new artworks from some of Britain’s most prestigious artists, most notably. Still unsurprisingly, albeit 98 years old, it’s still unbelievably difficult to book...