Friday Five: the week’s top news
- JKS Restaurants has confirmed it is to bring its food hall concept Arcade to Battersea Power Station next year. Details are limited, but the site will be 24,000 sq ft - nearly twice the size of the original Arcade which opened at London’s Centre Point earlier this year. The influential, rapidly growing group says it will create a ‘number of exciting new brands’ that will showcase ‘even more global cuisines’. Alongside this, there will be three standalone restaurants including one from the JKS Restaurants-backed Bao, which was a surprising omission from the line up of the first Arcade.
- Pubs, restaurants and bars are seeing outgoings triple, and are in deeper trouble now than during the pandemic, one of the UK’s Night Time Economy Advisors has said. Sacha Lord, the Night Time Economy Advisor for Greater Manchester, told Sky News this morning (9 August) that the combined damage of soaring inflation, energy bills, supply chain difficulties and wage increases, have led to a ‘perfect storm tearing through the heart of the sector’ and has called for the Government’s urgent return to Parliament.
- Josh and Holly Eggleton’s Pony Bistro restaurant in the Bristol suburb of Bedminster will close its doors at the end of the year to allow the siblings to focus on the upcoming relaunch of their Chew Valley flagship The Pony and Trap as the Pony Chew Valley. Located within Bristol Beer Factory on North Street, the site opened in May 2021 immediately after Covid indoor-restrictions on hospitality were lifted. Offering a keenly-priced-yet-ambitious set menu, the restaurant was well-received and the pair have teased that it ‘will be back’.
- Brighton and Hove-based chefs Kanthi Thamma and Diego Ricaurte will open an eclectic, spice-driven restaurant later this month. Located close to the Brighton-Hove border on Western Road, Palmito will explore how spices have migrated from the subcontinent to Latin America via Europe by way of a short, weekly-changing menu of small plates. The duo - who met while working at highly-rated Brighton Indian restaurant The Chilli Pickle - have already trialled the concept by means of a number of pop-ups in the seaside city.
- The ten chefs competing in the National Chef of the Year final on 19 September have been revealed. The line-up includes a number of well-known chefs including Launceston Place chef patron Ben Murphy, The Ledbury sous chef April Lily Partridge and Gravetye Manor head chef Adam Smith. For the main course, chefs should use British or Irish venison and incorporate more than one element whether offal, a secondary cut or prime cut. The dessert brief was left wide open and is simply a warm or cold dessert for a grand finale which provides balance to the menu and has a clear wow factor.
