Restaurants

A wine bar with a food menu of note, The Drop joins the Hart Brothers’ portfolio of restaurants at Coal Drops Yard. Near King’s Cross station and Granary Square, the Heatherwick Studio-designed shopping and restaurant district opened last autumn. Originally established in 1850, to handle to eight million tonnes of coal delivered to the capital each year, Coal Drops Yard’s most recent redevelopment sees a parade of Victorian buildings and arches reimagined to home various enterprises. Located in canal-side arches...

East London’s restaurant of the moment, Gloria is a contender for the city’s most unapologetically over the top new opening. The first overseas venture from the Big Mamma group, with seven restaurants in France, Gloria occupies the former Red’s True Barbecue site on Great Eastern Street. Having already received rapturous acclaim since opening earlier this year, the restaurant draws long queues, thanks to a no-bookings policy for groups fewer than six, and plans have already been announced for a second...

Tasting menus are like Marmite: you either love them or hate them. The eight to ten courses can be a minefield of petri-sized dishes that can be a surprise for the taste buds, or have you inhaling the whole bread basket and swinging by a fast food joint on the way home in order to curb the hunger. Tasting menus do not allow for a quick drop in dinner; its multiple courses served over two or so hours with wine...

With plenty of exciting launches constantly taking place across the Capital, we pick London’s best new restaurant openings taking place over the coming month. Siren at The Goring – Belgravia The first new restaurant to open at The Goring in over 109 years, Siren will join the Royal Warrant-appointed hotel’s flagship, Michelin-starred restaurant The Dining Room. A more casual dining option, with a prominent focus on seafood, inspired by the Goring family’s strong Cornish ties, Siren will be headed up...

London is a breeding ground for concepts. If it’s not a single item restaurant, it’s brunch in ball pits, allergen-free ice cream parlours, and God knows what else. Sky-high dining and rooftop restaurants are one concept that Londoners seem to lap up, and there’s plenty of choice what with every skyscraper or hotel with a decent view flogging their middle-of-the-road wares for double the price tag. One experience that offers both excellent food and views to boot is London in...

“The world’s oldest sandwich” is not the most appealing of tag-lines. Visions of that episode of The Simpsons, in which Homer falls ill after eating a ten-foot hoagie from the nuclear power plant’s company picnic are instantly conjured: the bread having turned purple and cloaked with fungus after a few weeks of stubborn perseverance. Instead, the label actually refers to the roujiamo (literally “meat sandwich”) – a street food staple originating from the Shaanxi Province in China. Now considered the...

St Luke’s Table is leading the march to revolutionise the fine dining experience for the UK’s growing community of vegans with a new luxury plant-based menu in the heart of Theatreland. Residing within the LIBRARY hotel and private members' club the restaurant is hidden away from the hubbub of Leicester Square and Covent Garden. It is accessed via a staircase illuminated by a stunning stained-glass panel featuring Saint Luke himself - the patron saint of artists and bookbinders – and...

It wasn’t always like this. Hotel restaurants were once, until quite recently, generally considered a last resort, aimed at guests too tired or unadventurous to explore the local area. During the late 1800s, Auguste Escoffier revolutionised hotel dining when hired by César Ritz, with the pair eventually collaborating on the food offering at the Savoy Hotel, closely followed by the Ritz in Paris. Between then and now, however, a wave of hoteliers became avaricious, idle, uninspired and – ultimately -...

Staff were told there would be a conference call where they were given the devastating news