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Chef Pedro Passinhas Creates a Menu Inspired by Wallpaper and More News

2017-08-29T18:00:41+01:00

Four things to know from the world of food today

“Experimental chef,” Pedro Passinhas, is launching a pop-up restaurant in Soho for London Design Festival: The “Off the Wall & onto the Plate” pop-up will feature a seven-course menu inspired “entirely” by wallpaper. It opens on 22 September and runs until 4 October in The House of Wallpaper by Graham & Brown at 19 Greek Street. The menu includes ‘sheet scallop’ served with slow cooked pork neck, metallic paper made from fresh oysters, and an edible wallpaper napkin amuse-bouche. Passinhas, said: “Cooking is an art form and a means of expression, and so is home décor. Bridging the gap between wallpaper and food was a challenge, but we’ve managed to translate the patterns and textures onto the plates while keeping the menu delicious, locally-sourced and seasonal.” Bookings can be made here:
Brunswick House has reopened today, following a refurbishment of the bar area. Jackson Boxer, the restaurant’s owner, tweeted a picture of the new, more modern look.

Bar refurb at @brunswickhse done. We are back open. Thank you. pic.twitter.com/otCRdA4G2D
— Jackson Boxer (@Jackson_Boxer) August 29, 2017

Olle, a new Korean barbecue restaurant, will open in Soho, according to a tweet by MCA. Charles Seo — the founder of Japanese restaurant Kyoto Soho — will open the 80-cover space at 86-88 Shaftesbury Avenue, on the edge of Soho, later this week.
The online supermarket, Ocado, is teaming up with Amazon to enable customers to add to their shopping baskets using the e-commerce brand’s voice-recognition system, Alexa, report Bloomberg. Ocado released a statement today announcing that they have developed an app for Alexa “that allows customers to add items to their digital shopping lists, keep track of orders and ask for product recommendations simply by speaking.” The service is available now.

Lyle’s Annual Game Event: Chef Line-Up Announced

2017-08-29T17:03:25+01:00

Fourth annual celebration of British game will take place 15 – 16 September at the Shoreditch restaurant

The line-up for chef James Lowe’s fourth annual game event at Lyle’s in Shoreditch has been announced. Joining the chef for two nights next month will be: Victor Liong from Lee Ho Fook in Melbourne; Lisa Lov, Tigermom in Copenhagen; Petter Nilsson from Spiritmuseum in Stockholm; David Posey from Elske in Chicago and Trevor Moran, who is in the process of opening a restaurant in Nashville.

The event will take place across two dinner services at the restaurant on Friday 15 and Saturday 16 September.

Since Lyle’s opened in April 2014, dozens of guest chefs from across the world have collaborated with James Lowe on the restaurant’s monthly guest series dinners. “I love how two people can look at something and come up with two completely different ideas,” Lowe has said in the past. Before he had his own restaurant, Lowe travelled a lot for inspiration; with less time to take those trips, part of the rationale behind Game was to ensure those influences didn’t completely disappear from his kitchen. For the past four years, Game has acted as a bumper edition of the guest series — held deliberately at a time of the year when British ingredients are, if not unique, then very particular. Each chef brings a different style to the event, which can mean dishes as quintessentially British and traditional as grouse or pheasant are treated in unconventional ways.

A gallery of this year’s participants can be seen below:

“You won't find any grouse with bread sauce on these menus,” the Lyle’s team say, flouting convention. Last year's dishes included girolles and grouse waffle from Rafa Costa e Silva (Lasai, Rio de Janeiro); Chongqing fried pheasant by Angela Dimayuga (Mission Chinese Food, NYC); mallard ‘Hualien’ style, satsivi an hazelnuts from Luke Burgess (Australia); and grilled chestnut ice cream and hare blood chocolate by Lowe.

Lowe will travel with the group of chefs to the hills farmland of the Cairngorms in Scotland's eastern Highlands. In Scotland, the team will take part in a deer stalk and duck shoot, as well as an afternoon of fly-fishing salmon on the River Dee. The menus will be revealed for the first time on the night of the events and the chefs rotate between courses across each night.

Friend of Lyle’s — Ryan Chetiyawardana aka. Mr Lyan of Superlyan, Dandelyan and Cub — is designing aperitivo cocktails with the event’s scotch whisky partner, Craigellachie Single Malt.

Date: Friday 15 and Saturday 16 September 2017, 6.15pm–9.30pm — 60 spaces are available each night. The dinner costs £89 for a (minimum of) six-course set menu, drinks and service not included. The menu will be different on each night. Tickets are on sale now here.

Watch: a video created during last year’s event can be seen here.

Sri Lankan Hoppers Will Open in St. Christopher’s Place on 12 September

2017-08-29T12:43:51+01:00

As well as taking reservations, there will be a focus on feasting menus

The second Hoppers from JKS Restaurants will open in St. Christopher’s Place, at the junction of James Street and Wigmore Street, on Tuesday 12 September it has been confirmed to Eater London today. The restaurant — which focuses on street food from Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu — will take reservations for lunch and dinner.

As reported last month, the site will be significantly bigger than the original restaurant in Soho: it will seat 85 across two floors, a further 16 on an outside terrace, and there is space for 24 in the four private dining vaults. The restaurant will “welcome more room for group dining and family feasting, Sri Lankan style,” a statement released this morning stated.

Karam Sethi, the restaurant group’s chef director, told Eater London: “Following the success of the first Hoppers in Soho in 2015, Sri Lanka being one of the hottest travel destinations of the last year, and subsequently a huge rise in popularity of the country’s food and culture in the capital, opening a second, larger Hoppers site seemed like a natural step. As well as offering reservations for the first time, a new element of Hoppers St. Christopher’s Place will be our feasting menus, allowing more options to dine family feasting-style, and exposing more Londoners to the bold flavours of Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu.”

Katy Manolescue | Article Design Studio

A render of the new site

Like at the Soho site, the St. Christopher’s Place menu will revolve around Hoppers’ namesake dish, a bowl shaped thin pancake made from fermented rice batter and coconut milk — and the dosa, made from a fermented batter of ground rice and lentils. These will be served alongside a selection of new karis (Tamil for curry) which will include lamb shank, aubergine, crab, cauliflower and prawn.

The new restaurant will also introduce ‘Rice and Roast’ dishes designed to be shared, feasting style. These will include banana leaf-roasted bream, green mango and madras onion; Jaffna lamb cutlets, cucumber mooli sambol; and chicken buriani, chicken heart acharu and yoghurt. A new feature will also the ‘Taste of Hoppers’ menu, offering a selection of favourites off the menu. At lunch, a rice plate will offer guests a set dish featuring rice, dal, kari, seeni sambol, gotukola sambol, aubergine moju, duck egg, cutlet — a fortifying traditional Sri Lankan lunch.

Hoppers Official

Black pork kari and egg hopper with sambols

Alongside the hoppers, dosas and feasting dishes, there will also be a selection of so-called “Short Eats,” the Sri Lankan term for snacks which are typically eaten with drinks. These will include bone marrow varuval with roti; Jaffna beef rib fry; hot butter devilled chipirones; and ‘Idli, sambhar, podi and coconut chutney.

Arrack — a Sri Lankan spirit made from fermented coconut sap — and the Dutch spirit Genever, will be the base sprits around which the new cocktail menu will be based. The drinks will be flavoured with ingredients “inspired by the flora and vegetation of Sri Lanka’s spice gardens.” Curated by JKS Restaurants’ Group Bar Manager James Stevenson, the list will include the signature ‘One Pot Sour’ made with Spice Tree Whisky, Amontilado sherry, lemon, mace, fermented rice syrup and truffle.

Also new to the second restaurant will be a selection of frozen ‘slushie’ drinks including the frozen pina-pol-ada and fro-yo mango lassi — as well as alcoholic milkshakes like a kappi frappi cino. Larger format cocktails for four to share will be available alongside the feasting menus: these will include the jungle negroni and burgher milk wine.

Hoppers St. Christopher’s Place opens following the success of its award-winning Soho sibling which was opened by JKS Restaurants in October 2015. The second restaurant, which will offer reservations as well as space for walk-ins.

The interiors, by Katy Manolescue of Article Design Studio, are inspired by the Jungle Modernist movement associated with the late Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa and his notion of transporting the outside Sri Lankan landscape into the modern home.

Fay Maschler Gives Clare Smyth’s Core a Different Sort of Three Stars

2017-08-29T10:23:49+01:00

Plus all of last week’s reviews — reviewed

Core

Three stars can be great news. When awarded by Michelin, they are — to some — still the most prestigious garland in all of cooking. Even when awarded by The New York Times, they’re cause for celebration: cause enough, at least, for recent recipients The Major Food Group to commission a tasteful ice luge in their honour.

In London, though? Not so much. Partly it’s due to the subtle difference in how stars are awarded here and across the pond: over there, restaurants have to work genuinely hard to get so much as one, which is how you get reviews like this, in which only two stars are awarded in what amounts to a rave. Over here, places seem to start with a couple of points already in the bank, which is how you get reviews like Fay Maschler’s of Core, in which the three stars awarded feel like damnation with the faintest of praise.

It’s quite the reality check for Clare Smyth to fall from Michelin’s three to Maschler’s, not least because London’s (question for spoddy fact-checkers: the world’s?) longest-serving restaurant critic might reasonably be assumed to have a better idea of what — and how — real paying customers will actually want to eat. So, the you’re-fooling-no-one informal décor might look great (and so very relaxed) but self-defeatingly it creates “hideous, angular, jarring acoustics.” As “genial” as the staff might be, the “flutering flock” of dudes in suits still look “like a convention of Mormons trained in tray-carrying.”

And the food? It’s good but not great — proper three out of five stuff: A “canapé tart of exquisite brittleness” is a “work of art”; sourdough bread and virgin Isle of Wight butter are “life-affirming.” But “copious” garnishes force the “innate sweetness” of a Charlotte potato into hiding; a lamb-braised carrot is “a sorry specimen,” accompanied by some yoghurt that has “turned up at the wrong party.” Grouse — that most topical of game birds — has suffered the indignity of sous-vide cookery, which produces a “flabby, liverish result”; it is a total “miscalculation.” Like any conscientious schoolchild’s botched arithmetic, there is plenty of working on show at Core; but Maschler’s review is a salutary reminder that there’s still a long way to go before Smyth can think about securing full marks.

Henrietta

We’re still in the not-great kind of three-star territory at Ollie Dabbous’ new project, Henrietta at The Henrietta Hotel, where Grace Dent finds lots to like but plenty to justify deferring a repeat visit, too.

At his now-closed namesake, a parade of critics ran out of superlatives and ways to proclaim that, yes, Ollie Dabbous was a very good cook. So whilst there was a slight fear that he’d come over all Tom Sellers and leave his talent behind on the Tube as he moved to a new postcode, it’s not really surprising that everything on show here is “ferociously delicious,” however “faffy” or “whimsical” it might appear — at once “knee-weakening” and “heroically satisfying” (come on, behave.)

But the curse of the hotel restaurant is a hard one to escape. The décor here is “troubling” — for all the team’s culinary ambition, it still feels like a “multi-purpose breakfast room,” not least due to “an abundance of shelving with not a lot on it.” Add the clientele — oof at this: “the lumpen, the flammable-fabric-clad and the roaringly regional” — into the mix, and Henrietta becomes a much harder sell. Perhaps one to save for a visiting aunt from out of town — the nice food and nonconfrontational setting could be perfect for her. As Dent acknowledges, this is Henrietta’s “gift” — “and also its problem.”

Prawn on the Lawn

There are far fewer problems on show, fortunately, up in Islington, where Marina O’Loughlin is in raptures over a darling little “temple to the piscine” and the “simple, almost primaeval pleasure” of “the freshest possible fish.”

She spreads the love far and wide, focusing in particular on a “genius” dish of crab, mooli and sesame oil and a “wonderfully meaty slab” of hake (the catch of that particular day.) But Prawn on the Lawn is such a success because even the little things — “beautiful” glassware, “a smart, shortish winelist,” “elegant” crockery” — are just so, adding up to an experience that sends someone not always easy to please “out into the street wreathed in smiles.” Her only real gripe is with that cutesy rhyming moniker — fair in any normal conversation, but not necessarily in the context of a London restaurant scene churning through new concepts faster than operators can smush together random words and trademark them as potential brand names. There is worse out there. There is, for example…

Fancy Crab

So. Jay Rayner at Fancy Crab. Another crustacean, another Guardianista journalist — but, unfortunately for the people who thought red king crab leg meat would be the cornerstone of a successful business model, not the same result.

Some obligatory blokeish banter to start — eating crab is like having sex, apparently, though Rayner leaves the simile hanging so it sounds like he’s still talking about doing it in his description of rolling up sleeves and abandoning “yourself to the mucky business at hand, with hammer, crackers and pick,” and a graphic digression into how “the white meat must be hard won, the brown meat scooped from nooks and crannies.” Yes, it’s time for this .gif again!

Anyway. Rayner doesn’t like this place one bit. It’s “designed to take the mess out of crab,” which makes it “an extraordinarily expensive way to wonder about the point of it all.” Then the food starts arriving and things get much, much worse: Fancy Crab is, in fact, “a terrible waste of their money and our money and everybody’s time”: wine prices are “excruciating”, chips “tepid”, chilli crab “a slippery, sugary mess, with no heat at all.” In fairness, it sounds pretty bad — the sort of concept-first, thought-last place that has proliferated in the wake of cautionary tale / cash bonfire Burger & Lobster. They don’t give out stars on top of Jay’s reviews, but in this case it doesn’t really matter. Three stars can be ambiguous, but you know what zero means wherever you see it.

5 Off-Radar Restaurants to Try

2017-08-25T18:55:58+01:00

Undiscussed for some time — but no less worthy of a visit

Yes — there are lots and lots of wonderful places to eat in London, some of which could be called essential; others hot. But there are also restaurants that fall into a category altogether less, well, categorical. A place that’s been around for a long time — reliable, reassuring, just right. A forgotten somewhere. Or somewhere that entered the business of hospitality before social media and PR became major determiners of a restaurant’s fate. Here’s five to try this week.

Lardo Official

Margherita at Lardo

Lardo

When the sun shines and the weekends are long, my thoughts always turn to Lardo in London Fields. Lardo, where restaurant life spills exuberantly onto the street for blood orange negroni necking, or chomping on their home-cured salumi: fennel pollen salami or coppa Romana, or their own version of capocollo. Where the fine, blistered-base pizzas come fast and furious from a domed wood-fired oven as spangly as a disco glitter ball, my favourites the tenderstem broccoli with ‘nduja, pecoroni and roasted garlic paste, and the one with the black anise pepperoni. The menu changes all the time, but there might be small plates of oozing burrata with Amalfi lemon, gooey-cheesy semolina gnocchi alla romana, a whisper-light, salty fritto misto. This is the perfect place to get lightly pished before snoozing in the (hopefully) sunny park, or wandering off to make unsuitable purchases on Broadway Market. A meal here always feels like a holiday.—Marina O’Loughlin
197-201 Richmond Rd, London E8 3NJ

Chris Pople

Apollo Banana Leaf

Before you flounce out of London entirely, ask yourself exactly where — in St Swithuns on Sea — you are going to roll up unannounced, over a bank holiday weekend, and cover a paper tablecloth with crisp fried mutton rolls and chilli sauce, sambar vadai (little urad dal doughnuts, soft yet biteable, with runny chutney), green banana bhajis, masala dosa, then seafood string hopper fry, king prawn biryani and devilled mutton. For £20 a head, people! Decoratively basic, shyly brilliant, Apollo Banana Leaf is also kind enough to operate a BYO policy, so crack open a Sybille Kuntz or two, and smile, as you delete your Rightmove app for ever and ever. ABL's deft and correct Sri Lankan cooking is so thrilling, you'll barely even question the mesmerising photographic murals of Canadian lakescapes.—Sophie Dening
190 Tooting High St, London SW17 0SF

Xi’an Impression

Tucked on a little side street facing Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, Xi’an Impression might look innocuous. Inside, this small, minimalist and welcoming Chinese restaurant proves first impressions can be wrong. Hand-pulled Chinese noodles are their thing: pale pappardelle-like ribbons in, for vegetarians, a deep, umami-rich sauce of soybean paste and zinging Sichuan peppercorns (one between two is good as a main). Fine salt and pepper squid is a textbook starter; garlic and ginger Chinese greens are almost always the perfect side.—Adam Coghlan
117 Benwell Rd, London N7 7BW

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Dumplings at Royal China Club

Royal China Club

Is lunch at Royal China Club the easiest, most pleasurable routine to slip into in London? Partly it's the room itself: a comfortable, genuinely clubby setting, as welcoming to customers knocking back a couple of plates of dim sum and some jasmine tea as it is to the high rollers toasting abalone with Château Latour. Partly, it's the service: efficient, hospitable, nothing's-too-much professional. A lot of it's the food, which ranges from impeccable dim sum — classic har gau, cheung fun and xiao long bao; more novel house speciality buns such as divine lamb, and cutely mimetic iberico ham and mushroom — to noodles and roast meats, and even fresh seafood fished from tanks on-site. Ultimately, though, it's the quiet sophistication and flawless execution of every part of the experience — with the added kicker that they take bookings. The number to call is 020 7486 3898. That's one less excuse not to make a first visit, soon to be followed by a second, a third and many, many more.—George Reynolds
40-42 Baker Street, London W1U 7AJ

Phat Phuc Official

Phat Phuc’s laksa

Phat Phuc Noodle Bar

Sydney Street in Chelsea is not the sort of place you expect to stumble across a noodle bar with just a few rickety tables, serving very decent noodle soups, but that's exactly what you'll find here. Hidden below street level in an outside courtyard, you simply wouldn't spot this daytime only restaurant if you didn't know it was there. A short menu includes Vietnamese Pho and dumplings, Bánh cuốn summer rolls, one stir fry, pork buns and 'Bang Bang' noodle salad — but it's the bowl of Malaysian laksa that I return for: £7.50 well spent. Phucing good.—Zeren Wilson
The Courtyard, 151 Sydney Street, London SW3 6NT

The 10 Essential Burgers in London

2017-08-25T17:06:55+01:00

Because every day is burger day

London's panting lust for minced beef in a bun does not wane. For all that tacos, cacio e pepe or doughnuts try to muscle in, a glistening burger remains the capital’s number one It dish, primed — between improbably stretched thumb and fingers — for Instagram, every lunch and dinner, every day of the week. Some are twelve napkin sloppy, others four-bites-and-out. Brioche buns, homemade “secret sauces” and impeccable sourcing are unifying factors. The best are grown-up, well-bred versions of the greasy, MSG-packed ones that recall an undiscerning childhood or late nights when options are scarce. Or clever and sensible reinventions, which pay due care and attention to protein and carbohydrate. Not, in other words, anything like this aberration. Here are 10 deserving of attention — any day.

A First-Look at the Brand New Santo Remedio

2017-08-25T12:03:50+01:00

Edson Diaz-Fuentes’ kitchen will have a charcoal grill and daily-changing specials

Mexican taqueria, “cantina and comedor”, Santo Remedio is one of this year’s most anticipated restaurant openings. Edson and Natalie Diaz-Fuentes’ are re-opening their restaurant in the second week of September, on Tooley Street near London Bridge. Widespread disappointment met the restaurant’s closure in Shoreditch last year. Excitement greeted their successful crowdfunding campaign earlier this year.

After nearly a year without a fixed location, they are back: Eater London was given an exclusive first look at the site, what Diaz-Fuentes describes as “the evolution of Santo Remedio.”

Laura James

Santo Remedio’s new cantina

The restaurant, over two floors, is bigger; the kitchen will have a greater capacity for Diaz-Fuentes to prepare a a much broader range of traditional Mexican dishes, from different regions of the country. The downstairs bar will have a small kitchen prep area for “guacamole, aguachiles, micheladas, margheritas, mescalitas and lots of local beers, from Bermondsey [famously with a high density of local breweries] and Hackney; no Corona this time.”

Laura James

The new bar tiled with the upcycled tiles they destroyed from the old site

One thing that is new to the site is a charcoal grill, which Diaz-Fuentes told Eater London will be used for “chicken, lamb cutlets, fish and octopus in achiote. It gives us more options so we can diversify our flavours coming our of the kitchen. Before we just had a gas grill. I’m excited to use this new piece of equipment,” he said. It will also mean that the new menu will have a small section devoted to al carbon — from the grill — “a few specials: tacos al carbon, pollo al carbon, chuletas al carbon — the blackboard will change as we decide what’s fresh, what we want to cook. I want to have the freedom to change things as we go. I don’t want a printed menu for two years,” he added.

Laura James

Fashion Designer Julien Macdonald Creates a Burger Box For His Nearly Namesake

2017-08-24T19:16:25+01:00

Four things to know from the world of food in London today

The fashion designer Julien Macdonald OBE has created a special edition burger box for McDonald’s new signature collection — a range they’re calling “gourmet burgers.” Commissioned to “combine fashion and food’s finest,” Macdonald said, “I drew inspiration from my fashion creations and iconic embellished red carpet dresses. This was translated into a gold baroque crystal encrusted box, which is the perfect packaging for the luxury McDonald’s Signature Collection burger.” There will be only 1,000 of the boxes available in selected branches — they’ll be distributed at a series of “showcase events” across the UK. Emily Somers, VP of Marketing at McDonald’s called the brand’s first ever UK packaging collaboration “a brave and exciting move and it’s like nothing we’ve ever done before.”
Richard Vines has tweeted that Friday 1 September will be the opening night of the new Joe Allen on Burleigh Street. Their original premises around the corner, where they traded for 40 years, were acquired by Robert De Niro for a new 83-room hotel, the Wellington, which is expected to open in 2019. Joe Allen is at 2 Burleigh St, London WC2E 7PX.
Big Hospitality report that ETM Group’s The Botanist will reopen after a 10-week refurbishment in October with a new chef — Ameya Bhalekar — who will oversee a new all-day brasserie format. The new look is the work of Russell Sage Studio, the designers behind Dishoom, Quaglino’s and The Savoy Grill. 7 Sloane Square, London SW1W 8EE
Farm Girl, the so-called “clean eating” cafe from Portobello Road in Notting Hill are opening inside Sweaty Betty, the fitness wear brand, on Carnaby Street. It will open on 7 September.

TWO WEEKS TO GO Who wants to see some smoothies back on the menu...

A post shared by Farm Girl Cafe (@farmgirlcafe) on Aug 24, 2017 at 6:45am PDT

Austrian Chef Lukas Mraz Is Newcomer Wines’ Latest Guest

2017-08-24T17:19:44+01:00

The chef will do kitchen takeover of the Austrian wine bar in Dalston next month

Lukas Mraz, a rising star in Austrian gastronomy’s new wave, will take over the kitchen at Peter Honegger’s Newcomer Wines in Dalston between the 7 and 9 September.

The 26 year-old is the former head chef of Cordobar, said to be Berlin’s first and most important natural wine bar. He has also worked at two-Michelin-starred Mraz & Sohn — one of Vienna’s top restaurants, which is owned by his father Markus.

Earlier this month Lucas Mraz participated in Gelinaz, the global chef collective that brings together many of the biggest names in the world of food and restaurants. “Gelinaz! Does Upper-Austria” was this year a celebration of a renascent Austrian culinary scene; Mraz was one of 24 chefs to attend, working alongside the likes of David Chang, René Redzepi, Bo Songivsava and Ana Roš.

Newcomer Wines

Newcomer Wines is one of a number of innovative new-wave wine bars in London. Like P. Franco in Clapton they are focused on lesser-known styles, a number of which are low-interventional and natural. At Newcomer, the wines are almost exclusively Austrian. Day-to-day, the food menu focuses on charcuterie and cheese, but Honegger has told Eater London that they’re looking to increase the number of chef takeovers, which have proved such a hit at P. Franco.

The Lukas Mraz takeover is walk-in only. No reservations. Details of the menu will be made available next week. Newcomer Wines, 5 Dalston Lane, London E8 3DF.

James Street in Marylebone Is Turning Into a Serious Restaurant Destination

2017-08-24T14:44:38+01:00

Caprice Holdings are the latest group to acquire a site on the street

Caprice Holdings — the restaurant group behind The Ivy, Sexy Fish and Scott’s — continue their ceaseless expansion across London with the news today that they have acquired the La Tasca site on James Street in Marylebone.

A holding announcement issued to Eater London read: “As of August 2017, Caprice Holdings has entered the licensing process for a space in Marylebone; 30-34 James Street, London, W1U 1EU, to open a new restaurant.”

Though official details are scarce, sources have told Eater London that Caprice Holdings are looking to open another Harry’s Bar site on the street. This comes just 10 days after the group acquired the Cafe Rouge site in Knightsbridge on which they are planning to open a restaurant version of the members’ club, reportedly called Harry’s Dolci. It also comes in the same week that the group confirmed their acquisition of the Grain Store site in King’s Cross.

The planners and developers for James Street, which connects Oxford Street and Wigmore Street, seem intent on redesigning the part-pedestrianised strip as a more grown-up restaurant destination. Adding to one of London’s favourite burger restaurants, Patty & Bun, Jason Atherton’s Social Wine & Tapas opened in 2015. There’s sushi bar and takeaway Atariya, too and early this year, Bone Daddies ramen shop opened their seventh site on the street. But news that Hoppers have moved on the area for their second site, followed by Alan Yau’s Yamabahçe pide concept announcement, and now Caprice, two things can be deduced: there’s not enough room, and rent hikes are off-putting, in Soho — and that this particular, renascent stretch of Marylebone is becoming a serious destination in its own right.