Restaurant Radar: August 2018

Beef & Brew Haggerston​
Kentish Town steakhouse Beef & Brew will launch its second site in August. The Haggerston restaurant will serve craft beers at the former Duke’s Brew & Que site in the heart of East London, a short walk from Regent’s Canal. Bar snacks will include a half pint of fried oysters with Beef, the restaurant’s specialty, comes as a range of cuts from a selection of respected suppliers including Txuleta in Galicia; and Swaledale Foods’ native-breed cattle in North Yorkshire.Steaks are dipped in beef dripping, grilled, and served with sides including carrots, dill and buttermilk dressing; and smoked aubergine with honey and miso.

33 Downham Rd, De Beauvoir Town, London N1 5AA
www.beef-and-brew.co.uk​

Borealis​
Danish restaurateur Soren Jessen’s next London site will open near Borough market on 7 August. Borealis is launching in conjunction with flexible working pioneers Fora, who have created a work space with a ground floor restaurant and café area. The Nordic menu will include veal and pork meatballs with mashed potato, lingonberries and pickled cucumber; and snaps-cured mackeral with juniper, orange, dill and shaved fennel. It is the third London restaurant for Jessen, who opened London’s 1 Lombard Street 20 years ago and brought Ekte Nordic Kitchen to Bloomberg Arcade in April.

180 Borough High St, London SE1 1LB
instagram.com/borealislondon/​

Amélie Flammekueche​
Well-known East Anglia-based chef Regis Crepy and his son Alex will open what’s claimed to be the UK’s first flammekueche restaurant in Cambridge’s Grafton Centre. Amélie Flammekueche will major on the eponymous Alsatian flat bread, with options including the classic combination of seasoned crème fraiche with thinly sliced onions and lardons through to more contemporary, trend-conscious toppings such as avocado and salmon, and pulled pork.

The Grafton Centre, Cambridge, CB1 1PS
www.amelierestaurants.co.uk​

Gunpowder​
Harneet and Devina Baweja’s second Gunpowder is expected to open in the One Tower Bridge development towards the end of August. The offer will be broadly similar to the inaugural Gunpowder in Spitalfields. With its punchy small plates and authentic flavours, the tiny no bookings restaurant was an early proponent of the new wave Indian genre. Expect the likes of rasam ke bomb (masala dosa in a shot glass); and spicy venison vermicelli doughnuts. Custard, the Gunpowder team’s adjoining bakery, is slated to open in September.  

One Tower Bridge, 4 Crown Square, London SE1 2SE
www.gunpowderlondon.com​

Beam Cafe, Highbury​
Crouch End’s well-loved Mediterranean-inspired restaurant Beam is opening a second site, with an extended menu and longer trading hours. Also called Beam, the restaurant will open in Blackstock Road and alongside its older sister's trademark brunch menu it will serve an evening offering drawing on the “flavours, tastes and ingredients of the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean.” Run by a mother and son duo, Beam is a three-times winner of Time Out’s ‘neighbourhood café of the year’ award. The restaurant has amassed a following for its Instagram-friendly brunch and lunch menus, which include the likes of a ‘Mediterranean breakfast’ of grilled halloumi cheese, egg, pastry with parsley and feta cheese, spicy sausage, sautéed potatoes, feta, olives, harissa, and tahini , served with bread and jam

178 - 184 Blackstock Rd, Highbury, London N5 1HA
cafebeam.co.uk​

83 Hanover Street​
The latest in a flurry of high profile Edinburgh openings, 83 Hanover Street is the first solo restaurant project from former Gleneagles restaurant manager Juan Jose Castillo Castro and his partner Vanessa Alfano. The menu in billed as a tribute to Castillo Castro’s Chilean and Swedish heritage and includes beef shortrib; purple causa, ensalada Chilean; and charred octopus with white bean escabeche. The food will be accompanied by a selection of wines from Europe and South America that have been chosen by Peter Brodie (former restaurant manager at Timberyard.

83 Hanover Street, Edinburgh
83HanoverStreet.com​

Parkers Tavern​
Former Launceston Place head chef Tristan Welch will open his long-awaited Cambridge restaurant on 1 August. The opening follows a nearly two-year refurbishment of the 192-room hotel, which reportedly cost more than £80m. Parker’s Tavern will be a “quintessentially British brasserie” launching at the redeveloped University Arms hotel. The chef trained under Gary Rhodes before joining Le Gavroche; L’Arpege in Paris; and Petrus at the Berkely. The restaurant will serve simple dishes made with local ingredients, including honey and thyme slow roast Norfolk duck with bitter greens and creamed potatoes; chalk stream trout with smoked butter, potatoes and watercress; and salt-baked beetroot hache with cashew, yellow tomato and horseradish cream.

Regent Street, Cambridge CB2 1AD
parkerstavern.com​

The Belrose​
The team behind Brixton’s Homegrown health café will launch their swish new pub in London’s Belsize Park. The Belrose is billed as a “modern take” on a British boozer and will serve a menu of Italian-inspired dishes such as pizzas cooked in a central clay oven, small plates and charcuterie. Drinks will include a House IPA brewed in an on-site microbrewery, alongside natural wines and international beers such as Italian Moretti and Californian Lagunitas on draft. As well as an 80-cover dining room, the pub has a 40-cover south facing beer garden that will be decked out with heaters, blankets and mulled drinks in the post-heatwave weather.

94 Haverstock Hill, London NW3 2BD
www.thebelrose.co.uk​

Through the Woods​
Crouch End supper club Chicken of the Woods has taken on its first permanent restaurant site, where it will offer a single set menu once a day. Founder Chris Slaughter, formerly of London pub The Pig & Butcher, has taken on an 18-cover location in Crouch End for the project. Through the Woods will serve a vegetable-centric menu using produce from Slaughter’s own garden, with a single “high-welfare” meat option. There will be one dinner sitting a day at 8pm from Thursday to Saturday.

212 Middle Lane, London, N8 7LA
www.throughthewoods.london​

Little Kolkata​
The supper-club-turned-restaurant opens its first permanent site in London’s Covent Garden in August. Co-founders Prabir Chattopadhyay and Biswajit Deb Das will be bringing authentic Bengali cuisine to the table, inspired by Chattopadhyay’s upbringing in Calcutta and Deb Das’s ancestral roots in Bangladesh. Dishes will include sharing plates of maacher cutlet served with the Calcuttan mustard sauce kashundi, and lilish maacher deemer, a popular Bengali spiced fish egg preparation, in keeping with the supper club nature of Little Kolkata’s early days. There will also be a number of speciality dishes on offer, such as chicken liver sautéed with spices and fresh chillies; truffle paratha; and Calcutta mishti doi, a baked sweet yoghurt dessert.

51-53 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London
www.littlekolkata.co.uk​

Yen Burger​

Opening in Southwark, Yen Burger is a fresh contender in the East-meets-West burger category that also includes Ichibuns in Soho. It is being launched by young entrepreneur Yen Nguyen, who says she has taken recipe inspiration from her mother’s Asian cooking as well as from western food chains. Several patty options will be on offer, including wagyu beef; cod; and butterflied king prawns, with sides such as Asian coleslaw; steamed edamame beans; and sweet potato chips. The 70-cover restaurant, which was originally slated for a June launch, will also serve Asian-inspired cocktails and the Japanese cultured milk drink, Calpis.

1B Southwark Street, London
www.yenburger.co.uk​