The Big Brine, co-founded by Emma and Clarice, who have backgrounds in events and event catering, will bring together the worlds of food, wellness and sustainability by showcasing the craft and culture behind brining and fermenting.
With precise technique, ingredient-led menus, and a cuisine rooted in British produce but driven by a modern approach to flavour and presentation, Brown has built a reputation as one of the UK's most exciting contemporary chefs.
Opened by husband-and-wife team Simone and Lidia Crepaldi on the old Chick 'n' Sours site in Dalston, HOAX is doing a creative take on classic Italian flavours. The menu includes dishes like citrus marinated sea bass with tomatoes and valerian gel, beef tartare with robiola, mustard and hazelnut, cacio e pepe, pasta pomodoro, braised beef cheek with potato purée and sweet peppers, roast chicken with brioche bread and black truffle sauce, and house tiramisu.
Kolamba showcases Sri Lankan home cooking as it's eaten across the island. Bold spices, deeply layered curries, fragrant rice and freshly made roti, all designed to be shared. Hoppers (also known as appa/appam) are a Sri Lankan staple: thin and lacy at the edges, soft and slightly spongy in the middle, and just as good at breakfast as they are at dinner.
Tower House sits right on the river in a 19th-century clock tower, in what used to be the Pitcher & Piano. It's a big, beautiful building spread over two floors, with a plush design - rich fabrics, deep colours, comfy sofas - plus a terrace that'll no doubt be a bun fight for seats come summer. Like its sister, the menu is Mediterranean, and there are even a few Gold classics on there too. I mean, why not? Once you've struck Gold and all that...
After 20 years on Westbourne Grove, the restaurant will close on 23 February and reopen on Tuesday, 3 March as TAQ, with a new identity and an entirely new menu led by chef Eduardo Yishima and backed by Jackson Boxer. Taqueria was one of London's early Mexican restaurants, but while the city's taco scene has levelled up fast, the menu here has largely stayed the same.
The dough is what really makes a Sodo pizza stand out - the sourdough base is made using flour from heritage grains and is fermented for 72 hours to make it light and digestible. But the toppings are no afterthought, with the team sourcing ingredients from local producers, including mozzarella and burrata made in Acton, pepperoni and nduja cured in Islington, honey from Walthamstow and leaves from a salad farm in Dagenham.
A host of one star restaurants have also closed since the last awards, including the two-Michelin-starred in South Ken. The one star La Dame de Pic at Four Seasons Hotel London at Tower Bridge and the two-Michelin-starred Lyle's in Shoreditch, Dosa at the Mandarin Oriental Mayfair (which was open less than a year), and The Five Fields in Chelsea have also shut down, with Club Gascon in Smithfield set to stop operating next month .
Vegan Mexican restaurant Club Mexicana has closed the doors to its Kingly Court restaurant after six years. In an Instagram post, the famously hot pink resto announced it had served its last tofish taco on February 7. Owner Meriel Armitage said the restaurant wasn't closing its Carnaby Street location because of a lack of success, but because the landlords want to redevelop the building.
That was Temaki, a small counter spot inside Brixton Village that we loved for its great quality and great value temaki sets. Owner A.M Dupee, who is relocating the restaurant to a larger central London site this March, sees the "huge potential in the growth of handrolls in the UK", saying that "handroll bars give operators the ability to give customers the balance of high quality produce in a convivial atmosphere without the price tag of an expensive sushi or omakase meal."
The pavement along Barking Road in Plaistow is a blur through the front windows and deserted, and there are only two customers in the shop. Another sign this one on the counter says CASH ONLY. Card machine companies often tell proprietor Nathan Jacobi that he's missing out by not catering to customers who favour cashless transactions. They're the ones missing out, he says. Cos they ain't getting pie and mash.
In Mayfair and looking for the perfect burger? May we point you in the direction of Dover Street Counter, one of our new favourite restaurants in London . We've just reviewed this slick new diner, which comes from the same team as The Dover, the New York-style Italian restaurant which opened in 2023, and which we loved so much that it made our list of the best restaurants in London .
It'll be the first opening outside of Notting Hill for husband-and-wife team Christina Mouratoglou and Adrien Carré Mazi and Suzi Tros, both in Notting Hill, are two of the best Greek restaurants in London, and this spring, they're about to be joined by a third spot, only a little further east than W8. Owners Christina Mouratoglou and Adrien Carré have chosen Mayfair for their latest project Maza, which'll channel the spirit of a 1980s Athenian taverna.
London's bakery scene has got to be one of the best in the world right now. As well as an abundance of croissants and sourdough, there are bakeries doing everything from Italian maritozzi to Japanese milk bread and pretty much everything in between. The weekend pastry run has become a ritual (bonus points if you literally run to the bakery) and bagging goods from Toad or Chatsworth Bakehouse before they sell out is a social flex.
There's a brand new number one in Time Out's list of the best London restaurants with views , and it's a newly-opened joint just by Hyde Park. Congratulations to Shanghai Me, which opened last year on the 28th floor of the London Hilton on Park Lane. The same address was once home to Galvin at Windows, which closed in 2024 after 18 years of trading.
Tse was not raised cooking Japanese food and, in preparation for opening The Azuki Room, travelled to Tokyo to train at the Japan Culinary Institute. He told me a bit about this process, but where his resilience has really been tested is in London. The Azuki Room was due to open in 2025 but suffered a series of unfortunate events: the site was occupied by squatters, the premises were damaged, stock and equipment were stolen, and the specialist sake Tse bought in Japan was consumed.
'The Porchester Hall, a beautiful building near The Royal Oak, looked hugely grand as I walked in with my pal Tim,' Bethell said. 'We were there first and grabbed a table near the front, watching people pour in covered in tartan, as we waited for a polite time to go get a plate of haggis with potatoes, carrots and swede. It was delicious.
When it opened in 2021, Brixton Market's Temaki quickly became a hit with the city's sushi aficionados. The restaurant, which was London's first dedicated to handroll sushi, received a Time Out reviewer's praise for its 'triple whammy of expertise, exceptional produce and classy execution'. Alas, the south London Temaki wasn't to last. The California-style sushi joint shut its Brixton outpost last summer. Now, however, Temaki has announced a grand return to the city - this time in central London. A new location will open on Mayfair's Maddox Street
Khan started Darjeeling Express as a pop-up at Soho pub The Sun & 13 Cantons in 2014 before taking on a permanent site in Kingly Court. She decided not to reopen there post-lockdown and chose instead to move the restaurant to a bigger site in Covent Garden, where she stayed until the summer of 2022. Following another pop-up stint, this time in west London, Khan moved Darjeeling Express back to Kingly Court at the beginning of 2023.
Laura and the team have transformed the upstairs area into an intimate and relaxed space, with dimmed lighting, low ceiling and long centre bar topped with a few of the tapas dishes on the menu. You have a front row view of the chef knocking up the pinxtos from the bar, which is always helpful when deciding what to have next.
It is a great honor to be a custodian of The Great Dame of Dean Street on her 100th year, alongside Sam Hart and Crispin Somerville - 100 years of good folk crossing the threshold bringing such joy, mirth, and merriment to Quo Vadis, Lee told Elite Traveler.
After releasing her cookbook Rambutan, celebrating the food of Sri Lanka and her Tamil roots, Cynthia Shanmugalingam opened a restaurant of the same name in Borough in 2023. Rambutan received rave reviews almost immediately and has built a rep for being one of the best Sri Lankan restaurants in town thanks to dishes like mutton rolls, saffron chicken pongal rice, and kottu roti with crab and chilli butter.
Onsu, an Asian-inspired bake house and patisserie, opens its doors in Soho on January 15. The sweet treat haven at 55A Dean Street is fronted by chef Michael Kwan, a multi-title pastry champion and the former executive pastry chef of the Dorchester. Kwan's career has also included stints at Ladurée, Hakkasan, and the three-Michelin-starred The Fat Duck. The new spot will combine Asian flavours with classical European style baking.
According to recent data, over 2 million people are typically out and about across the capital between 9pm and midnight, with around 1 million remaining active later into the night, in a testament to the city's enduring after-dark draw. A "rain check" no longer has to mean disappointment, though. Across the capital, nightlife has evolved into something far more flexible than a simple pub-to-club circuit. Dining, entertainment, gaming and culture increasingly blend into evenings that feel intentional rather than improvised.
