Restaurant Radar: July 2021

Sucre​​
Chef Fernando Trocca is to bring his contemporary Latin American concept Sucre to the capital, launching on Great Marlborough Street later this month. Billed as a 'reimagining' of his Buenos Aires restaurant of the same name, which opened back in 2001, Sucre London will champion a cooking style that 'combines traditional Latin American open fire techniques with a broad palette of international influences'. Dishes will include ox cheek quesadilla; scallop tiradito with jalapeño and pomegranate; monkfish tail with XO sauce and black beans; and half chicken 'al Ladrillo' with onion fondue. Meanwhile, Tato Giovanonni, who was head bartender at Sucre in Buenos Aires when it first launched and is the owner of Floreria Atlantico (currently ranked number 7 in The World’s 50 Best Bars), will oversee underground bar Abajo, which will sit directly below the restaurant.
47 Great Marlborough Street, London W1F 7JP​​

The Pem​
Named after suffragette Emily ‘Pem’ Wilding Davison, Sally Abé’s signature restaurant at the Conrad London St James has been slightly delayed but looks set to open before the end of the month. The 70-cover Art Deco-inspired fine dining restaurant will ‘celebrate generations of pioneering women that have led from the front’, and this is reflected in Abé’s senior team. Laetizia Keating, who has previously worked with Abé at the Harwood Arms, and before that at restaurants including Benu and Mirazur, is head chef while  Emma Underwood, previously of Darby’s and Where The Light Gets In, has been appointed general manager. Dishes on the launch menu will include poached native lobster, shellfish cream, heritage tomatoes and sweet olive; roasted John Dory, with brassicas, lemon, and sauce choron; and black forest gateau, chocolate curls, and English cherry ripple ice cream.
22-28 Broadway, Westminster London SW1H 0BH​
www.hilton.com/en/hotels/loncoci-conrad-london-st-james/​ ​

Sessions Arts Club​
Former Polpetto chef Florence Knight is to oversee the kitchen at Sessions Arts Club, an upcoming restaurant, wine bar and art gallery in Clerkenwell. Announced in late 2019 and originally slated for early 2020, the venue has been conceived by artist Jonny Gent, former St John restaurant manager Jon Spiteri, architect Russell Potter (SODA) and brothers Ted and Oliver Grebelius of Sätila Studios, and is finally set to open on 28 July. Knight will create a ‘refined, seasonally led menu inspired by British, French and Italian cooking and her preference for simple food with carefully grown and sourced ingredients at its heart’. Dishes include grilled friggitelli with sea salt; sea bream, fig leaf and sorrel; potato and chard croquettes with lemon aioli; lamb sweetbreads with lettuce and lovage; and ricotta and cherry tart. The 60-seater dining room will be flooded with light from a series of arched windows looking out onto the rooftop while a roof terrace seats 20 and leads out to a marble bar and infinity rooftop pool with views over the city.
24 Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R 0NA​
www.sessionsartsclub.com​​

Bonnie & Wild's Scottish Marketplace​
Set within Edinburgh’s St James development, Bonnie & Wild’s Scottish Marketplace is billed as being 'the largest single F&B site in Scotland'. The 16,600sq ft food hall will be designed 'to demonstrate the very best of Scottish produce and hospitality' and is being promoted as the first concept of its kind to open in Edinburgh. Eight different restaurant concepts will operate stalls within the space, including Glasgow-based southeast Asian restaurant Ka Pao; vegan restaurant Erpingham House; MasterChef: The Professionals winner Gary Maclean’s Creel Caught, which will champion Scottish seafood; and chef Jimmy Lee’s Hong Kong street food concept Salt & Chilli Oriental. This will all sit alongside a retail offering featuring local artisanal butchers, fishmongers, grocers, cheesemongers, chocolatiers, and bakeries. There will also be three 'unique' bar areas serving an array of alcoholic and non-alcoholic craft Scottish products.
1 Leith St, Edinburgh EH1 3SS​
bonnieandwildmarket.com​​

The Cadogan Arms​
Well-known Chelsea pub The Cadogan Arms reopens later this month with Kitchen Table chef James Knappett overseeing the food. Dominic Jacobs of The Running Horse Mayfair is spearheading the project as managing director having raised capital from a number of private investors, including Jyotin, Karam and Sunaina Sethi, the founders of JKS Restaurants and backers of Knappett at Kitchen Table. Formerly of The Ledbury and The Harwood Arms, executive chef Alex Harper has worked with Knappett to produce a menu that draws inspiration from his first-hand experience of growing up in pubs. In the dining room, the focus will be on simply-prepared British produce, with hero dishes including brown crab quiche with horseradish crème, lemon and herb salad; black garlic chicken kiev with shaved fennel salad; and strawberry sherry trifle.
298 King’s Road, Chelsea, London SW3 5UG​
thecadoganarms.london​​

Pizza Mozza​​
American chef and baker Nancy Silverton is making a return to the capital, where she trained to become a chef, to open a site of her acclaimed Los Angeles restaurant Pizza Mozza. Opening in Treehouse Hotel London, the restaurant will serve pizzas such as those topped with clams, red onion, garlic, parsley and pecorino; and speck, pineapple, jalapenos, tomato and mozzarella, alongside antipasti of salt cod fritti, celeriac, remoulade, and squash blossoms fritti with ricotta. The restaurant will have an exclusively Italian wine list.
4-5 Langham Place, London, W1B 3DG​​
www.treehousehotels.com​​​

The Glenturret Lalique Restaurant​
The Glenturret’s upcoming restaurant is being headed up by former Number One at The Balmoral head chef Mark Donald, who has a star-studded international cooking CV that includes Noma. The Glenturret Lalique Restaurant will be pitched at a much higher level than any other distillery-based restaurant in Scotland, offering a tasting menu that blends ‘contemporary Scottish culinary innovation’ with ‘a foundation of classic French gastronomy’. Whisky will play a key part of the experience with Donald and team currently working with the distillery to understand how the raw ingredients of malted and peated barley are turned into new make spirit. The restaurant is being opened in partnership with high-end French glassware maker Lalique. 
The Glenturret Distillery, The Hosh, Crieff, Perthshire PH7 4HA​
www.theglenturretrestaurant.com​​

BAO Noodle Shop​
The BAO trio are mixing it up once again with their latest opening, which will take inspiration from Tawain’s beef noodle shops, offering steaming bowls of the hugely popular dish alongside its eponymous filled steamed buns. On Redchurch Street within the site that was once home to Andina, BAO Noodle Shop will make its wheat noodles in house each day using flour imported from Taiwan to give them the correct structure and bounce. There will be two styles of beef noodle soup available: a classic Taipei-style broth that closely matches the style of the beef noodle soup found across Taiwan with slow braised beef cheek and beef shortrib, spiced beef butter and fermented greens; and BAO’s take on a Tainan-style broth, which is based on recipes from the southwest of the island with a lighter broth combined with imported 400 day-aged white soy and thin slices of rare poached rump cap. The interiors will draw influence from the tiled noodle shops of Taipei. 
1 Redchurch Street, Shoreditch, London E2 7DJ​
www.baolondon.com​​ 

Sunday in Brooklyn​
New York restaurant Sunday in Brooklyn is to launch its first site across the pond later this month in London’s Notting Hill. Founders Todd Enany, Adam Landsman and Jaime Young opened their original site in Williamsburg in 2016, and have drawn a loyal neighbourhood following for their inventive spins on American staples. Signature dinner dishes likely to be making the journey from New York to London include clams casino; whole smoked artichoke with saffron aioli; grilled swordfish with charred broccoli greens and butter bean pistou; and chocolate S'mores. The Notting Hill restaurant will also have a strong brunch offer, with a menu that will feature dishes including stacks of malted pancakes with hazelnut praline and brown butter; a Don Reuben omelette made with mole sauce, goat cheese and roasted mushrooms; and biscuits and gravy – drop cheddar biscuits, sausage gravy, poached eggs and sambal.
98 Westbourne Grove, London W2 5RU​
sundayinbk.co.uk​​

Kudu Grill​​
The duo behind Peckham-based South African restaurant Kudu and sister venues Smokey Kudu and Curious Kudu will open their fourth venue later this month. Kudu Grill will open on 28 July in a former Truman’s pub in Peckham and will be a 50-cover restaurant centred on the braai - a South African grill using y wood and charcoal. The menu will comprise five sections - snacks, starters, braai mains, sides and desserts – with dishes to include grilled potato flatbread with lardo and wild garlic; fried pigs’ tails with honey mustard; grilled prawns with peri peri butter; cauliflower, caper raisin, goat’s curd and kale; and pork chop with monkey gland sauce. The restaurant will continue the aesthetic of the group’s other venues with bare brick and concrete walls.
57 Nunhead Lane, London, SE15 3TR​​
www.kuducollective.com​​​

Black Friar​
Neil Burke, former regional manager for Jamie Oliver Restaurant Group, will manage this 200-cover pub in the grade two-listed Salford building, which has been refurbished and extended as part of Salboy’s Local Blackfriars development. Salboy had originally signed up chef Aiden Byrne to open a restaurant within the Black Friar building, but he pulled out of the venture last year. The building has had a complete overhaul, but will still operate as a traditional pub - albeit with a modern glass restaurant space built into the back of it. Chef Ben Chaplin, who was previously at 20 Stories, will oversee the kitchen and has created two menus for customers to choose from. The pub and courtyard area will offer a more informal range of small plates to share and classic pub dishes, while the restaurant will have a more elevated menu with a twist on British classics and a focus on locally sourced food.
LOCAL Blackfriars, 41 Blackfriars Rd, Salford M3 7DA​

Hector’s​
Former Hill & Szrok general manager and partner Jimmy Stephenson is to open a wine bar on 22 July in London Hackney's De Beauvoir neighbourhood, which will also operate as a bottle shop. Called Hector's, the concept is inspired by the cave à mangers of Paris and drinking holes of San Sebastian. The bottle shop, which is already open, sells a mixture of natural and classic European wines, while the wine bar will have an emphasis on dynamic wines and small plates at accessible prices. Luca Mathiszig-Lee, owner of Hill & Szrok, is on board as a partner at Hector’s, and Stephenson will run the business with his wife, actress Anna Shaffer. The food offering will draw on Stephenson and Shaffer’s travels and love of European bar food, and have an emphasis on local suppliers. Dishes set to feature include Cantabrian anchovies soaked in olive oil with rose petals; courgette carpaccio with fresh cheese; salted Catalan almonds; and pâté en croûte made especially for Hector’s by butcher George Jephson.
47-49 Ardleigh Road, N1 4HS​
hectorslondon.co.uk/​​

Hackney Coterie​
Located in a modern warehouse in Hackney Downs, Hackney Coterie will be the second venture from Anthony Lyon, who opened nose-to-fin seafood restaurant Lyon’s in Crouch End in 2019. He is teaming up with sommelier Kelvin McCabe to create a restaurant, wine shop and deli set over two floors. The seasonal weekly-changing menu will have a minimal-waste focus with dishes set to include pig head croquettes, baby shrimp, rhubarb sriracha, and onion seeds; cured pork belly, kisaichi-pickled watermelon, and smoked tofu; and burnt apple filo tart, hazelnut and koji crumble, and tonka bean ice cream. Dominic Auger has been appointed head chef. The wine list will feature lesser known producers and have a strong focus on biodynamic, organic, and minimal intervention wines with more than 100 references.
230 Dalston Ln, London E8 1LA​

Temaki  ​
Brixton Village is to get a new restaurant this month in the form of Japanese handroll bar Temaki. Market Row will be home to the debut restaurant of executive chef and Japanese rice specialist Shaulan Steenson, whose menu will include sushi grade fish wrapped in crisp seaweed with golden Uruchimai rice and rolls such as white and brown crabmeat with egg yolk and white soy; tuna with fresh wasabi and nikiri soy; and ‘unagi’ eel with its own sauce, cucumber and wasabi. The menu will also feature a regularly changing seasonal special and a small selection of small plates. Temaki was originally launched as a pop-up restaurant during last year’s lockdown and was due to open last month but had to postpone it until July.
12 Market Row, Brixton, London, SW9 8LD​
temaki.co.uk​​

Flor Under The Arches​
James Lowe and Pamela Yung will soon launch ‘Flor under the arches’, a pop up covered terrace in the railway arches adjacent to Lowe’s Borough Market restaurant Flor. The menu is more simple than that served in the restaurant itself, offering the likes of gildas with smoked eel and pickled caper leaves; crispy barbecue chickpeas; skate wing and leek terrine; ajo blanco with Sicilian almonds; and mackerel with green tomatoes. The space will be available for walk-ins only from 6.30pm Wednesday to Saturday. “We’re looking forward to welcoming guests to our terrace at Flor next month,” says Lowe. “It will be the ideal place to meet up with friends over a glass of wine with bar snacks and terrines this summer, or have a pre-dinner drink while waiting for a table in the restaurant.” 
1 Bedale St, London SE1 9AL​
florlondon.com​​

Taqueria ​
Notting Hill taco restaurant Taqueria is taking on the site formerly occupied by Grind in London’s Exmouth Market to open its second venue. The move, which comes 16 years after the launch of the first restaurant, will bring Taqueria’s popular dishes, including roadside chicken, green chile and potato and potato crispy tacos; al pastor pork quesadilla; and sea bass ceviche tostada to Clerkenwell with an extensive collection of margaritas, mezcales, tequilas and micheladas with which to wash them down. 
8-10 Exmouth Market, London, EC1 4QA​
www.taqueria.co.uk​ ​