If September’s restaurant openings were dominated by brave new culinary ventures, October and November are all about welcoming pre-loved concepts into exciting new spaces. From a physical, visitable site for The Barbary’s lockdown meal kit concept to a bricks-and-mortar home for a celebrated Italian pop-up, autumn's harvest of discerning new dining tables awaits...
Jack Croft and Will Murray, aka the chefs behind sustainability-focused, Michelin Bib Gourmand-recognised restaurant concept Fallow, are swapping their guest-chef residency at 10 Heddon Street's rotating kitchen for their own bricks-and-mortar site in the West End. Supported by chairman James Robson, the pair, who met while working at two Michelin-starred Dinner by Heston, are opening the doors to their new 150-cove site on Tuesday 16 November, where they’ll be serving a ‘nose to tail’ (and veggie ‘root to stem’) weekly changing menu, at least 50% of which will be vegan.
The menu is divided into six sections, with a special selection of snacks – including Fallow’s signature corn ribs with kombu seasoning (pictured) – available to those sitting closer to the action at the chef’s counter and those waiting for a table in the bar.
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Rarely, at Culture Whisper, do we highlight new menus. (With many of our favourite restaurants changing up their dishes weekly, we’d never keep up.) But news that Dalston’s experimental Italian-Japanese fusion restaurant Angelina was opening for Saturday lunchtimes, offering its omakase and kaiseki tasting menus – for less, could not go ignored.
The restaurant opened in 2019 as the quirky lovechild of ex-Bocca di Lupo chef Daniele Ceforo and owner-manager Joshua Owens-Baigler, who trained at the River Café. The dining room is distinctly Japanese, with a cluster of warm hanging lanterns hovering over an open kitchen and counter table, while elsewhere, a potted fig tree stands framed by woven lampshades, and simple, marble-topped tables hug wide glass windows.
To the food: both the four-course omakase (£29) and 10-course kaiseki (£49) menus are available for the new lunch sitting – do pick the latter and experience Ceforo’s full box of tricks. To gush over specific dishes which may no longer be available may sound cruel, but it sets the tone for the calibre to expect here. Among October's highlights was a glazed brioche bun homing a yuzu-drizzled soft-shell crab; delicate slivers of cured halibut doused in truffle soy and speckled with furikake; a single square of giant raviolo which appeared like a vision of autumn with its crown of Italian funghi and hazelnuts, and topping of an egg yolk primed to burst with Insta-worthy levels of satisfaction; and plump, flame-scorched quail breasts served with punchy, salty pickled vegetables. Do leave room for dessert, which on our visit was an inspired riff on the creamiest panna cotta, cocooned by a scoop of spicy mango sorbet, syrupy hunks of fruit and a generous dusting of crumbs.
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From the team behind pioneering plant-based restaurant Mildred’s, which has been serving a vegan menu since the 1980s – long before the plant-based diet was cool, comes Mallow, a Borough Market outpost taking the comfort-food classics of its predecessor and elevating them. In the Roots Room, diners can peer into the open kitchen and see their chosen dishes created, while the Floret dining room offers a more formal set-up. Those after drinks and light bites, meanwhile, should head to the Petal Bar, where cocktails and small plates are the order of the day.
The menu has been created by Mildreds’ head of food development Sarah Wasserman, with star dishes including a plum plant chicken burger; banana blossom tacos; and kumquat lemon meringue pie.
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Out of the ashes comes new life, and so is the case with Rita’s, a bricks-and-mortar home in Soho for Gabriel Pryce and Missy Flynn’s former Dalston pop-up of the same name, opened with the help of Jackson Boxer (Orasay, Brunswick House) back in 2012. At the heart of the new Rita’s are the same core ideas: a menu serving jazzed-up takes on comfort-food classics from the Americas, a punchy, tequila-led cocktail list to complement it, and the sort of warm, inviting atmosphere diners want to linger in.
Highlights from Gabriel's menu include hot bean devilled eggs (a favourite at the old pop-up); barbecued beef tartare; a steak dinner for two; and a dessert of house-made key lime pie. (Feeling snug yet?) As for drinks, Missy’s new take on a margarita sounds promising, made with sansho pepper-infused Tapatio tequila. There’s a wine list too, focusing on low-intervention bottles.
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Word of another opening linked to Zoe and Layo Paskin’s exceptional restaurant The Barbary is unarguably exciting, but it will come as bittersweet news to fans of the Covent Garden restaurant’s coffee shop Jacob the Angel. Said coffee shop, perched next door to the restaurant, has closed its doors (though a new site is promised soon) in order to make room for The Barbary Next Door, a manifestation of The Barbary’s lockdown home-delivery venture.
The day-to-night casual restaurant and wine bar is helmed by The Barbary’s head chef Daniel Alt, with the group’s wine director Honey Spencer (also in charge of The Mulwray at the Blue Posts) overseeing the vino.
Arrive early to linger over cortado coffees, sweet North African pastries and a savoury special of ‘roadside eggs’ (a Middle Eastern dish of spiced minced lamb kefta simmered with eggs in a spiced tomato sauce). Those who call in for lunch or dinner can look forward to a menu framed by breads, including a fluffy pitta topped with salty anchovies plus a new house special. There are lighter dishes, such as the exotic-sounding Tunisian pumpkin salad, plus larger, warming plates for sharing, including oxtail tagine and a Moroccan-inspired chicken pastilla dusted with cinnamon and icing sugar.
Il Borro Tuscan Bistro already boasts two popular sites abroad, both in its home region of Tuscany and along a sleek beach-side stretch of Dubai, but this autumn sees it break the London market. Taking over the former site of Nobu Berkeley in Mayfair, the vast 220-seater restaurant is a chance to sample the organic, farm-to-table delicacies of executive chef Andrea Campani and head chef Fulvio Opalio. Il Borro’s wines, too, are organic, produced within the same region the family-conceived restaurant hails from. This is authentic Italian fine dining.
Manteca started life as a guest-chef residency in the hallowed hall of culinary innovation that is 10 Heddon Street. Two years and one pandemic on, and founders Chris Leach and David Carter are finally able to open the doors to their first permanent bricks-and-mortar site in Shoreditch.
Through a menu hoping to entice diners on a culinary excursion across Italy, look forward to an original selection of pasta dishes peppered with favourites from the original pop-up, including brown crab cacio e pepe. Larger dishes cooked over fire include a black pork chop and wood-roasted sea bream. No less effort has gone into the dessert menu: those who book in imminently can essentially eat a slice of autumn via the amaretti and delica pumpkin ice cream sandwich. Also carried over from the pop-up is the team’s appreciation for aperitivi and amaro cocktails.
Dining at Manteca is a visual adventure too, with guests invited downstairs to see the salumis swing, before passing by the meat-slicing counter to watch them sliced. Pasta in the making, too, is on display, with chefs rolling and shaping at a bench in front of diners.
Behold The Fat Badger: the latest opening from the Gladwin Brothers (of The Shed, Sussex and Nutbourne fame). Bringing a taste of the Sussex countryside to a cosy Richmond pub, the restaurant boasts a new menu from chef Oliver Gladwin, made with ingredients sourced from the family’s farm run by brother Gregory.
Grilled meats and fish dominate the mains and come flavoured with foraged herbs. A special Sundays on the Farm menu will see your weekend conclude with experimental small plates and a hearty roast, washed down with a bloody mary. And there’s gourmet sandwiches and snacks for the in-and-out crowd. Wines, of course, come from the family’s award-winning Nutbourne vineyard.
Marylebone restaurant Carousel has dedicated the last seven years to welcoming a steady stream of exciting guest chefs, offering them a prestigious space to fire up the stoves and impress the London clientele with their best flavours. Founding brothers Ollie and Ed Templeton have now shut up shop at the original site, only to take the concept to a new, more central space in Fitzrovia.
Not only is the new site more central, it’s much bigger – spanning three Georgian townhouses – with separate spaces dedicated to private dining, parties and culinary workshops. Focal to Carousel 2.0 is, of course, a space dedicated to welcoming rising (and risen) chefs from around the world. Only here, diners are seated around a chef’s table, from where they can watch the magic unfold in the kitchen. Thrillingly for grape aficionados, the complex also plays home to Carousel’s first dedicated wine bar.
October welcomes a third home for pop-up Mexican kitchen Tigre Tacos (existing sites can be found at Nine Lives cocktail bar in London Bridge and The Gunmakers in Clerkenwell) – this one tucked niftily above female-run mezcal bar Doña in Stoke Newington. Adopting a similarly hot pink aesthetic to the bar, the restaurant serves a menu cooked up by chef Ramon Ramos, inspired by 70s California. Highlights include the camarones taco (grilled king prawns, habanero and roasted pineapple salsa) and a veggie-friendly courgette and baby corn taco. A top tip for drinkers: tacos can also be ordered downstairs in the bar.
It’s been a tough year for environmentally conscious members’ club The Conduit, the original Mayfair home of which became a shuttered casualty of the pandemic. But the name, the club’s commitment to driving social change and, it seems, a lot of its ethically sourced furniture is now housed at a new address in Covent Garden. Here, the club’s first public restaurant, Warehouse, is opening in November.
Based on the ground floor of the grade II-listed site, the restaurant has an earthy feel, with hand-painted tiles, hand-woven curtains and reclaimed furniture dotted across the 80-cover space. The kitchen is headed up by Brendan Eades, formerly head chef of Hackney Wick’s zero-waste restaurant Silo. In keeping with the club’s ethos, Eades is serving up a boldly flavoured, seasonal menu, the ingredients of which have been sourced from a trusted body of relatively local suppliers. In charge of the liquid portion of the menu is mixologist Walter Pintus, whose ‘hyper-seasonal’ drinks menu features cocktails infused with home-made cordials, vinegars and pickles.
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