Restaurant Radar: November 2022

Studio Frantzén​
Renowned Swedish chef Björn Frantzén will make his UK restaurant debut this month with the launch of Studio Frantzén at Harrods, Knightsbridge. Spanning two floors in a custom-built space within the iconic London department store, Studio Frantzén will feature a restaurant, rooftop terrace and bar area and hold more than 150 covers. First announced last year, Studio Frantzén will 'celebrate the unique combination of Swedish and Asian flavours' with a focus on preservation techniques and open fire cooking. Starters on the launch menu will include tartar of tuna and red deer, vendace roe from Kalix, white kombu, wasabi-infused cultured cream, fermented Mirabelle plum and warm ginger butter, billed as 'a Frantzén signature dish; while the mains will feature an aptly named dish called ‘Sweden vs Japan’ featuring braised Swedish dairy cow beef brisket that's salted, preserved, braised, cooked for eight hours and served alongside grilled Japanese wagyu with lemongrass jus and Japanese mustard. A Nordic-inspired drinks list will be served in both the bar and restaurant.
87-135 Brompton Rd, London SW1X 7XL​
harrods.com/en-gb/restaurants/studio-frantzen/​​

Gaucho Liverpool​
The city of Liverpool welcomes two large steakhouses this month, one from Argentinian brand Gaucho, which is opening on Water Street. Taking the site of the Grade ll listed  former Bank of Liverpool, the 200-cover restaurant will have a bar area for an additional 90 covers as well as two private dining rooms and a ‘Beef Bar’ where guests can enjoy experiences such as beef and wine masterclasses. It will open on 28 November serving a menu of carbon-neutral beef as well as starters such as shrimp ceviche; empanadas; vegan pasta alla Norma; and whole grilled seabass with herbs and lemon.
7 Water Street, Liverpool, L2 0RD​
gauchorestaurants.com​​

Bacchanalia​

Richard Caring’s latest is among the most high profile restaurant launches of 2022, employing 180 staff including the UK’s first-ever ‘grape feeder’. Taking its name from booze-fuelled Roman festivals, Bacchanalia will invite Mayfair to  ‘indulge in life’s riches and rarities’ by offering a heavyweight wine list with a focus on Italy and a food menu inspired by Greece and Italy. The food will be overseen by culinary consultant Athinagoras Kostakos, the chef and owner of a number of high profile restaurants in Greece including Nōema Mykonos. He will be supported by joint executive chefs Enis Spacho and Theo Zarikakis, who have between them worked at London restaurants Meraki, Mazi and Temper. The drinks side of the business will be led by group wine director Terry Kandylis, who was formerly head sommelier at wine-focused private member’s club 67 Pall Mall.
1-3 Mount Street, London, W1K 3NA​
bacchanalia.co.uk​​

Hawksmoor Liverpool​

Steakhouse group Hawksmoor opens its 10th UK restaurant in Liverpool’s Grade II-listed India Buildings on 24 November. The restaurant, which will be located on the corner of Brunswick Street and Fenwick Street will have space for a 150 cover restaurant as well as a private dining room and bar. The group has pledged £10,000 to charity Feeding Liverpool, a local food alliance set up o tackle hunger and food insecurity by identifying the root causes of poverty and will make further donations with contributions from its best selling menu items.
8 Brunswick Street, Liverpool, L2 0PL​
thehawksmoor.com/locations/liverpool​​

Akub​​

Franco-Palestinian chef Fadi Kattan will make his UK debut this month with the opening of modern Palestinian restaurant Akub in London's Notting Hill. First mooted back in April, Akub, which takes its name for the Arabic word for cardoon, will 'celebrate the under-represented rich culinary history of Palestine, with a bold and updated approach' cultivated by Kattan and his business partner, Rasha Khouri. The menu will be split between salad and starter plates and larger options, with a range of breads, drips and condiments also served. Options will include Akub focaccia available to order with red lentil moutabal; arak-cured sea bream; crunchy mansaf balls; and grape vine leaves stuffed with skate. Split over two levels with an internal courtyard and with 68 covers in total, Akub has been designed by hospitality designer Annie Harrison of FARE INC, with a colour scheme that echoes Palestine’s landscape, focusing on olive green, earthy pinks, oranges and sand tones.
27 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7TQ​​
akub-restaurant.com​​​

Bouchon Racine​

Henry Harris’ well-known Racine signage takes pride of place in his upstairs restaurant that sits above the Three Compasses pub he and former Goodman operations director David Strauss have taken on. The Farringdon restaurant will serve the classic French bourgeois food for which Harris is known in a 45-cover dining room while downstairs is also being given a complete fit out, with the once black painted pub a now much smarter shade of red.
66 Cowcross Street, London, EC1M 6BP​
bouchonracine.com​​

NOTTO​
Originally called OTTO before a certain restaurant of the same name took umbrage, NOTTO is Elystan Street chef-patron Phil Howard’s much more casual pasta sibling that opens in London’s Piccadilly on 3 November. What started as pasta delivery brand will be a fully fledged, 74-cover restaurant serving up hearty pasta dishes such as hand-cut pappardelle with a ragout of aged Hereford beef shin and red wine; raviolo of scallop and prawn with herbs, lemon zest, spring onions and butter; tagliatelle with chicken stock, tarragon, farmhouse butter, lemon zest and parmesan; and agnolotti of pumpkin and chestnut with brown butter, capers and sage.
199 Piccadilly, London​
nottopastabar.com​​

Dorothy & Marshall​

The Grade II listed courthouse of the former Bromley Town Hall is the impressive location for British restaurant Dorothy & Marshall that opens later this month. The all-day restaurant is being headed up by chef Ralph Jones, who’s CV includes time working in the kitchens with chefs including Chris Galvin, Marco Pierre White, Garry Hollihead and Eric Chavot. Menu details are still under wraps but the restaurant is promising classic British dishes and the championing og locally sourced ingredients from London and Kent. 
4 Court Street, Bromley, BR1 1AN​
dorothyandmarshall.co.uk​​

Maria G’s Fulham​
Robin Gill and Aaron Potter will launch a second iteration of their casual Italian restaurant Maria G’s this month in London’s Fulham. Located by the river beneath a new residential development on Central Avenue, the new site will be focused on seafood and will feature a raw bar. Dishes will include hand-dived scallop crudo with green mandarin, chilli and coriander; razor clams dressed in gremolata; and citrus-cured chalk stream trout. There will also be a number of large pasta dishes designed for guests to share, including baked lobster orzo with winter tomato, fennel and vault vermouth; and spaghetti alla ‘Nerano’, a famous Amalfi pasta dish made with fried courgette and provolone cheese. The restaurant will feature a large riverside terrace with a retractable roof and floor-to-ceiling sliding doors. Design features include an open kitchen with a marble dining counter and leather seats, plus a bank of cosy cream-coloured booths at each end of the dining room. There will also be a separate 50-cover bar overlooking the Thames, with its own small outdoor terrace. As with Maria G’s first restaurant in Kensington, which opened earlier this year, Gill and Potter will launch the Fulham site in partnership with Pete Warden of LXA Hospitality.
Unit 4, 20 Central Ave, London SW6 2QE​
mariags.co.uk​​

Hicce Hart​​

Chef Pip Lacey and business partner Gordy McIntyre’s Islington pub launches later this month. Hicce Hart will be run along the same lines as the pair’s Coal Drop Yard restaurant Hicce, combining British-style small plates with craft beer and biodynamic and sustainable wines. The kitchen will be led by Charlotte Harris, who previously worked at Hicce before moving on to anumber of London restaurants including Fallow. Agustina Basilico will manage the floor having worked with Lacey and McIntyre from the beginning. “The pub is one of the few real levellers in life: it showcases the beauty of multicultural London at its finest,” says McIntyre, who went into business with Lacey - the former head chef of Angela Hartnett’s Murano in 2018 having spent the majority of his career in the pub and bar sector. “To have the privilege to become custodians of such a historical site is a real honour.”
58 Penton St, London, N1 9PZ​
hicce.co.uk/the-hicce-hart-pub​​

Miznon Notting Hill​

Filled pitta specialist Miznon is doubling up in London with a second site opening in Notting Hill. Located on Elgin Crescent, the ‘kiosk-style’ restaurant will have 40 covers inside with an outside terrace with space for an additional 20 covers. It comes soon after founder and chef Eyal Shani brought the brand to London to Soho four months ago. The new restaurant continues Shani’s ‘eat with your hands’ ethos of with a menu of idiosyncratic pittas such as baby whole roasted cauliflower melted into its own crown; bag of green beans; run over baked potato; fish & chip; cottage pie; folded cheeseburger; nd all-day English breakfast. New dishes are also in the pipeline.
14 Elgin Crescent, London W11 2HX​
miznon.co.uk​​

Pulia​
The heel of Italy will be celebrated later this month with the launch of Pulia in Borough Market. The 60-cover restaurant will offer a menu inspired by Puglia and the south of Italy more generally, including antipasti such as frisella bruschetta with capocollo ham, rocket and balsamic vinegar, and burrata from Andria with cured ham alongside mains such as a traditional beef sausage spiral from Bari; and cuttlefish stuffed with breadcrumbs, parmesan and parsley. There will be also be a selection of fresh pasta to include hand rolled strozzapreti with grilled tuna, aubergine and pachino tomato sauce as well as pizzas such as stracciatella cheese; spicy ‘nduja; and black truffle. The restaurant’s design will have a muted colour palette with the use of natural materials such as wood and stone designed to represent the southern Italian landscape.
36 Stoney St, London SE1 9LB​
pulia.com​​

CAVO ​
Ivo Dimitrov is bringing his CAVO restaurant to London following the Mediterranean concept’s success in Greece and Spain. The vast 11,300 sq ft open plan restaurant and outside terrace will be based in new Tottenham Court Road Station development The Outernet and is being billed as ‘celebration of the expansive culinary expertise of everything the sea and the earth has to offer’. “We are thrilled to be bringing our Mediterranean dining concept to one of Europe’s most lively capitals and in the coveted 4th floor setting at brand-new state-of-the-art The Outernet building,” says Dimitrov, who is Bulgarian born with Greek heritage and has lived in London for two decades. “We’re confident our roof top terrace and authentic Mediterranean experience will become one of London’s top dining destinations when we open this autumn.”
The Now Building, Outernet, Denmark Street, London, WC2H 0LA​
cavorestaurant.com​​

The Beckford Canteen​

Former Kitty Fisher’s and Cora Pearl chef George Barson has returned to the South West to launch a new restaurant in Bath city centre. The Beckford Canteen will be the second restaurant for the Beckford Group, which operates upscale pubs in Wiltshire and Somerset. The group’s latest project occupies a ‘small but perfectly formed site’, a former Georgian greenhouse, on Bartlett Street. There will be around 40 seats inside and a further 40 in the restaurant’s ‘hidden’ garden to the rear. The Beckford Canteen will be open from midday through to the evening, serving lunch and dinner as well as drinks and snacks between the hours of 4-6pm. The modern British menu will ‘centre around provenance and seasonality’ and include the likes of rarebit with beer pickled onions; sardines on toast; cured pig’s jowl; gurnard, shellfish sauce, sea beet; and black treacle and ginger sponge, brown butter ice cream.
11 - 12 Bartlett Street, Bath, Somerset, BA1 2QZ​
www.beckfordcanteen.com​​

Berberè Pizzeria​
Clapham’s Berberè Pizzeria is heading north with a new site planned to launch in Kentish Town mid this month. Calabrian brothers Matteo and Salvatore Aloe launched the brand in 2020 and have already amassed a loyal following for their sourdough ‘artisanal’ pizzas. Berberè Pizzeria has also gone down well with the guides, having obtained a top rating from respected Italian food guide Gambero Rosso as well as being featured in Phaidon’s Where Chefs Eat. Located on Kentish Town Road close to the station, the pizzeria will seat 76, with a street-side outdoor dining terrace seating an additional 16. The interiors are pared back, with exposed brick walls and Italian street art from collective To/Let, giving ‘a sense of liveliness and a nod to the pizzeria’s roots’. The pizza menu mixes much-loved classics with more original creations, including the salsiccia (Yorkshire pork sausage, tomato, fiordilatte mozzarella, parmigiano reggiano); and the spinaci(sautéed spinach, red onions, fior di latte mozzarella, taleggio, aioli and parmigiano).
300 Kentish Town Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 2TJ​
berberepizza.it/en/berbere-clapham-london​ ​

Straker’s​

Former Elystan Street and Casa Cruz chef Thomas Straker opens his first solo venture at the start of this month. Located on Golborne Road in Notting Hill, Straker’s serves ‘food you want to eat’ with dishes that include flatbread with cavolo nero, and stracciatella; wood roasted oysters, seaweed butter, and fermented chilli; grilled langoustine and claw sauce; BBQ quail, smoked aubergine, and spiced yoghurt alongside larger options such as roasted turbot tranche, grilled cabbage, borlotti and pumpkin; middle white pork loin, carrots, apple, and radish; and ex-dairy sirloin on the bone.
91 Golborne Road, London, W10 5NL​
strakers.london​​

Club Mexicana Spitalfields​

The Mexican Californian inspired vegan street-food brand opens its newest restaurant in Spitalfields on 16 November. Located in a former gallery, printing press and bank, the new 70-seater restaurant will serve an expanded menu that will include birria tacos - tortillas stuffed with slow-cooked ‘beef’ brisket, queso, onion and onion salsa - and the ‘tofish & chips’ tac made with beer-battered tofish with pea salsa verde, tartar sauce, pink pickled onions and matchstick potatoes. The venue will have a bespoke terrazzo counter and a 80s-inspired mirror ball among its design features.
46-48 Commercial Street, London, E1 6LT​
clubmexicana.com​​

Maresco​
Restaurateur Stephen Lironi’s third London venue will be a Spanish seafood restaurant in Soho. Called Maresco, it will be located on Berwick Street with its name - a conjugation of the Spanish word, ‘mar’, meaning sea, and ‘esco’ (short for escocia), which is Scotland, hinting at its approach of using Scottish seafood cooked in a Spanish style.
45 Berwick St, London W1F 8SF​
maresco.co.uk​​