Keeping track of London’s new restaurant openings is enough to give any normal person a headache. But we’re not normal. And nor are you. You love finding the latest spot that you simply have to tell your friends about before anyone else does. So do we. That’s why we’ve put together this guide to all the new openings that have caught our eye. Just remember, this isn’t an endorsement, as we haven’t been to all of these places. It’s for you to go and find out what’s what for yourself, so fare forward voyagers.
Also check out our guide to the best new restaurants we've visited, The Hit List.
June 2023
Sam’s Kitchen
The latest opening from a restaurateur looking to conquer Hammersmith—no prizes for guessing what his name is—Sam’s Kitchen is a corner cafe right on the Thames. It’ll be breakfast to lunch serving an array of, quite frankly, delicious-sounding meals. There’s a bacon muffin with emmental and hot sauce, homemade crumpets with crab and lobster mayonnaise, and never-not-great kimchi toastie.
Kachori is the latest opening in that preened re-developed bit in Elephant and Castle. It’s a modern Indian restaurant complete with a big outdoor terrace that has an ex-head chef from Gymkhana, so our expectations are understandably high. The menu ranges from a fried butter chicken burger to dal tacos, and Keralan beef ulathu.
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Leo’s is an exciting combination of the team behind Juliets Quality Food working with an ex-Bright (RIP) chef. The cafe, bar, and restaurant is taking over the space that was once Jim’s Cafe on Chatsworth Road and turning it into a classy-looking Italian canteen full of mahogany browns and white tablecloths. The full menu is currently under wraps, but expect things like rabbit agnolotti and grilled pork loin with braised broad beans, alongside a vibe that looks extremely on point.
May 2023
We’re already regulars at Oren Deli, popping in to stock up on bags of pillowy pita and pots of hummus, and now the deli from the folks behind the Dalston restaurant of the same name has a dine-in option. It’s ideal for escaping the Broadway Market crowds and sitting down for some small plates. Dishes will be Mediterranean-leaning with those pitas, labneh, cured pollock, and a daily changing menu of natural wines by the glass.
Lilienblum
The brainchild of Miznon’s founder Eyal Shani, Lilienblum is a new Tel-Aviv-inspired restaurant on Old Street. The space is pretty whopping and, unlike Miznon, it’s more of a big sit-down, friends and family affair than a quick pitta. That said, the menu is similarly eccentric with dishes like ‘Ribeye steak the way God intended’.
Bossa is in between Monopoly heavy-hitters Mayfair and Marylebone, and serves sharing-style Brazilian dishes. Think skewered duck hearts with farofa, roasted scallops, and açai sorbet with sugar cane bran. The dramatic chef's table, with its 10-seater dining counter, is the place to be. And you’ll want to explore the wine menu too—it’s been put together by one of South America’s best sommeliers, Laís Aoki.
House Of Ming
A healthy dose of gold interiors plus a duck dish that’s delivered to your table with a gong—House Of Ming is a luxury addition to the St James's Court Hotel in Westminster. The menu is best described as China by way of India, with decadent takes on Sichuan and Cantonese dishes—like a prawn truffle siu mai and stir-fried lobster.
20 Berkeley
Mayfair’s latest addition is going after all things British—produce, craft, design, the lot. 20 Berkeley mixes the vibe of an English manor house with what appears to be a restaurant you’d wear your nice socks to. The menu will change seasonally but, at the moment, there are things like cheese and onion choux buns, Dorset snails, and slow-grilled turbot with gnocchi on the menu. There’s also a downstairs bar which uses in-house distilled spirits.
photo credit: Lateef Photography
Noci Battersea
Noci has joined the cavalry opening at the new Battersea Power Station. The handmade pasta spot’s second location will, like its Islington restaurant, offer excellent-value cacio e pepe ziti, silk handkerchief pasta, and cocktails.
photo credit: Giulia Verdinelli
Passyunk Nine Elms
Successful and unsuccessful visa applicants from the American embassy can now celebrate or drown their sorrows in equal measure at the latest location of Passyunk Avenue. The Philly cheesesteak-slinging, NHL-screening, Sam Adams-pouring, cosplay-ish dive bar is the place to go when you want to celebrate the land of the free. There will be an all-you-can-eat-and-drink Sunday brunch too.
photo credit: Giulia Verdinelli
Blacklock Canary Wharf
Fans of face-sized steaks will be pleased to hear that Blacklock is opening another restaurant. This one is in Canary Wharf and with 120 covers, it’s the biggest of the bunch. The chophouse will serve the same quality meats, burgers, and Sunday roasts as its other spots. But this one’s inside a massive converted warehouse on North Dock by the waterside.
The Antinori family are to wine what the Dyers are to British culture—essential. Cantinetta Antinori is the Italian winemaker's first restaurant. Just off Sloane Street, the characterful, three-storey building has London meets Florence interiors. Expect great wine from the family’s estates (yes, plural), hazy jazz nights, plus Italian dishes like crispy octopus and the obligatory cacio e pepe.
Harvest
With tables spilling out onto the street, a ‘secret’ garden, and light, bright interiors—Harvest feels like a no-brainer this summer. The restaurant sits between Kensal Rise and Queen’s Park, and serves a seasonal, British-influenced menu that takes you from breakfast—via kitchari and kedgeree—to dinner with sea bass and duck liver profiteroles.
Bao Mary
It’s Bao’s world, we’re just living in it. The Taiwanese restaurant is adding another spot to their roster. Bao Mary is close to Oxford Street and brings the same Taiwanese dumpling house energy as the other spots. As well as pan-fried, freshly folded dumplings, there are plenty of quick-serve cold dishes—like soy-braised vegetables and majiang noodles—which makes sense for this bustling location.
Apoy’s short menu is made up of Filipino BBQ skewers, like the must-order pinoy pork skewer marinated in banana ketchup, 7up, and calamansi. It’s ideal for a quick lunch of meats and vegetables cooked over charcoal, but don’t skip the fried chicken skin at this Oxford Street Market Halls spot.
You know what London needs? Not pigeon catchers. Another Big Mamma restaurant. Carlotta in Marylebone is the city's fifth Italian restaurant from the group. It’s got the same, more is more aesthetic—Venetian marble bar, golden drapes, velvet seating, and mirrors, lots of mirrors—but with a brand new menu. Think Neapolitan and Sicilian classics with an American twist. Basically, penne alla vodka and Aperols.
Lasdun is where to go if you want to scream “I’m a classy Londoner”, without actually screaming “I’m a classy Londoner”. It’s a restaurant at the National Theatre from the team behind Hackney favourite, The Marksman. The menu features brasserie-style dishes like seasonal pies, brown butter and honey tart, and smoked eel.
Mano Mayfair
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Mano Mayfair is a hangover waiting to happen—it’s a Brazilian-fusion restaurant, with St Tropez beach club vibes, and it's open until 1.30am. This South American-influenced spot might be leaning into clubstaurant territory, but things are serious in the kitchen. Michelin-starred chef Rafa Gomes heads up a team cooking salt cod croquettes, seared tuna, and roasted Iberico pork.
The Campaner
The Campaner answers the brief you never knew needed answering: take me to church, via Barcelona. Opening at the Chelsea Barracks, opposite the Grade II-listed Garrison Chapel, the restaurant will be a shrine to Barcelona in the heart of Chelsea. Stop by for a peaceful lunch or dinner of things like monkfish and lobster casserole, fish cooked in a Josper oven, and charcoal-grilled meats. Post-dinner, palo cortado sherries in the wraparound terrace garden are the move.
Americana
Promising Southern charm and hospitality, plus soul food-inspired dishes, Americana has opened in London’s Haymarket. Inside there are art deco-style lamps, burnt orange banquettes, and Americana-inspired artwork. It’s open until 3am and is located moments from Piccadilly Circus.
April 2023
Bakeries are good for the soul. Especially ones that serve garlic and cheese scrolls and glistening brioche. Only open Fridays and Saturdays, Eric’s is a neighbourhood bakery in Dulwich that’s already got customers queuing up for the hench-looking croissants. They also hold workshops where you can learn to make pie and summer pudding.
Pentole & Padelle
Translated from Italian, the name of this place means pots and pans. Which is always a good start when it comes to food. But it’s probably because this Italian spot near Goodge Street has a whole section dedicated to things like mussels cooked in white wine with the portion depending on your choice of four different size pots, and tagliolini cacio e pepe served in a pan. It all sounds very charming. As does the margherita for under a tenner.
March 2023
In a huge plot twist, Eat Vietnam is a Vietnamese restaurant. Let that sink in. We gave the OG location an 8.6 and they’ve now opened a second spot in Deptford. Expect dishes like bánh mì, fried sea bream with shredded mango, crispy prawn pancakes, and baby back ribs.
The only way to get us to exercise is to build a restaurant above a yoga studio. Maene is bringing European bistro energy to a four-storey Victorian warehouse in Spitalfields. The all-day spot encourages boujie stretching on the lower levels, followed by cocktails on the rooftop, and pork loin and tomato tart in an airy dining room with skyline views.
Hankki
Crowd-pleasing takes on Korean dishes is what Hankki, a new spot on Soho’s Wardour Street, specialises in. It’s moody, with nightclub-level darkness, but neon strips mean it’s light enough to take pictures of photogenic cheese shrimp rolls and dalgona coffee puffs.
The Gurkhas
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Inspired by the food of the Himalayas and using British ingredients, The Gurkhas is a new Nepali restaurant on Great Portland Street. Comforting dishes include steamed chicken dumplings in a soybean soup and mutton sekuwa. Plus 50p from every Gurkha pickle dish will be donated to aid Gurkha veterans and their communities.
Xi’an Biang Biang Noodles
Xi’an BiangBiang Noodles have opened another spot in Covent Garden. It’s a simple, wood-clad room where signature pork dumplings and hand-pulled noodles in rich beef broth are inhaled, alongside hot and sour soups.
The fried chicken at Other Side Fried has us whispering “oh god that’s good” after every mouthful, so when the people behind deity-level chicken open a new place, you take note. Ploussard is a neighbourhood wine bar and restaurant in Clapham with a menu full of BBQ scallops, buttermilk potatoes with a beer mustard sauce, and egg yolk ravioli with wild garlic butter.
photo credit: Juan Trujillo Andrades
Noble Rot Mayfair
Noble Rot has marched west into Mayfair, to add to their spots in Soho and Bloomsbury. The formula at the latest wine bar will be much the same—a historic building with a backstory, London’s best bread, and an extensive, interesting wine list.
House of Hades
A chef incubator sounds like somewhere Gordon Ramsay would shout at you in chef whites until you cry bone broth tears. But House of Hades is actually much more chill. It’s a bar and restaurant in Hackney that’ll give a range of chefs with great ideas a space to showcase them, and it has a late night licence so expect DJ sets and cocktails.
On the corner of Neal’s Yard, Story Cellar is a Parisian-inspired restaurant with rotisserie cooking at its core. The menu includes things like dover sole and mussels in cider, but the chicken and wine by the glass are where it's at.
Market Place Harrow
A 300-seater food hall, Market Place, has arrived on Harrow high street. The massive space will host permanent vendors like Bread Ahead, Little Tokyo, and Chaii & Spice, as well as a rotation of pop-up restaurants. Come during the week for laptop-friendly, long tables, or pile in on the weekends with friends or family—dogs are welcome too.
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
Birria Taco
We’ve loved this taco spot since it started as a pop-up in the basement of a Paddington hotel back in 2020. Now Birria Taco has opened their first permanent restaurant in Kensal Rise. You can expect more of their juicy birria tacos, birria ramen, and meaty loaded fries.
London Shell Co
Everyone’s favourite restaurant on a boat has opened a new location, this time in Parliament Hill—and it’s very much not on a boat. The new bricks and mortar spot of London Shell Co falls somewhere between a fishmonger, a seafood bar, and a wine shop. You’ll find things like Maldon oysters, caviar, and whole bream on their menu.
Döner Shack
Döner Shack is a Berlin-based street food spot specialising in kebabs, now open in Marylebone. You can expect turkey currywurst, mixed chilli doner kebaps, and chicken shawarma salad boxes on the menu.
Nakanojo
You’ll find yellowtail tataki, soft shell crab tacos, and spicy tuna uramaki at this new Peruvian-Japanese restaurant in Marylebone. With plenty of foliage and colourful murals, all-day spot Nakanojo looks like it’s bringing the sun to W1.
photo credit: Justin DeSouza
The Parakeet
North London’s latest gastropub has arrived. The Parakeet’s dining room looks reassuringly warm and woody and, with a former Brat chef in the kitchen, the menu suitably inviting. Spider crab croquette and wood-roasted rabbit with kohlrabi and curry leaf jump out, and the celeriac wellington on the Sunday roast menu is something we’d like to try.
CheeMc, a popular Korean restaurant in Elephant and Castle, is opening in Soho. The new spot is on Great Windmill Street and like its first iteration will have lots of fried chicken and beer.
A bakery, pastificio, and deli—Forno is covering all the important food groups with its new Hackney spot. Come to stuff yourself silly with stuffed pasta and sip strong Italian coffee by Regent’s Canal. Open 8am-5pm, Forno will take you from pastry to pizza, with stuffed focaccia sandwiches and daily changing soups in between.
photo credit: Johnny Stephens
Kibako
This new Japanese restaurant in Fitzrovia will have kibako, omakase-style boxes filled with sashimi and sushi, at the heart of its menu, as well as set menus with seared butterfish and à la carte options like hand-dived scallops. The dishes at Kibako will be served in an intimate dining room complete with sushi bar.
Esti has done what our travel agent couldn’t—combine a trip to Greece and Australia. The new restaurant will be coming to the Orangery at TT Liquor in Shoreditch for a six-month residency. It’ll serve a menu of Greek-inspired dishes with Australian hospitality and seasonings sprinkled in. Think twice-cooked lamb ribs, served sharing-style, and octopus in a spicy tomato sauce.
Rambutan
Rambutan will champion Sri Lankan cooking—with dishes like burnt cabbage varai and fried mutton rolls—in its dining room with furniture from independent designers and tiles by a Tamil ceramist. Expect an open kitchen at this Borough Market spot .
The Treats Club
We’ve had a bit of an on again, off again thing going on with this doughnut specialist. Partly because our dentist told us off, but mostly because The Treats Club has been popping up for months at a time in spaces like Netil Market, Seven Dials, and other food markets. So to say we’re buzzing for their first permanent dessert spot in Hackney is an understatement. Expect their signature doughnut sundaes, a doughnut X croissant collab, and that famous marshmallow fluff sold by the tub.
Forced to close in July 2022 due to a fire, The Ninth is finally reopening its doors. The Charlotte Street restaurant has a menu of French and Mediterranean-style sharing plates like osso buco croquettes, pork cheek tortellini, and pain perdu.
Angry Crab Shack
Angry Crab Shack is a seafood restaurant in Piccadilly Circus serving everything from clam chowder to a £125 seafood boil for two. Come for lobster tails, po boy sandwiches, and whole—hopefully not angry—snow crabs. And you should know that they sell melted butter by the pint.
This new all-day Indonesian spot in St James’s is serving all the classics—think chicken satay, gulai kambing, and their own twist on the nasi goreng—in the kind of laid-back dining room you could get cosy in.
From pop-ups in pubs to a permanent space in London Fields, the Hot 4 U chefs are living an east London dream. Their first restaurant, Papi, is likely to get fans of comedy Instagram @real_housewives_of_clapton going. There are small plates, of course. Oysters dressed with iced rhubarb, veal brain cacio e pepe. It’s the familiar meets funky equation thrown into a paired-back industrial room, and there’s a 14-seater cocktail bar downstairs.
Archway
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Arch 65, LondonNamed after its setting beneath a railway, not the area it’s in, Archway is a new Italian-ish pasta spot in Battersea. There’s an understated feeling to its Instagram aesthetic and the menu reads similarly—a crème fraîche, crab, and winter tomato flatbread, pappardelle with chicken livers, polenta doughnuts with honey mascarpone and rhubarb. The room looks suitably candlelit and dried flower-filled.
Soho’s latest addition comes in the form of Nessa, a British bistro on Brewer Street. It’s going to be below a new members’ club, so the feel is like if Heal’s decked out a gastropub. The menu is full of familiar-sounding things, like smoked haddock salad or wild mushroom ravioli, as well as a couple of enticing-looking outliers. Black pudding brioche and celeriac carbonara, we’re looking at you.
A Danish steakhouse has opened its first international location around the corner from Liverpool Street. KöD is defined by its self-described simplicity: perfectly cooked steaks—from fillet, to rib-eye, to wagyu—and sides like chilli garlic fries, caesar salad, and corn ribs.
photo credit: Rebecca Dickson
La Gamba
This new Spanish-inspired tapas restaurant—from the team behind Applebee’s Fish—has opened on the Southbank riverside, with plenty of gambas on the menu. Expect jamon croquetas, patatas bravas, and views of the Thames.
photo credit: Sam Harris
The Counter
Chocolate babaganoush, pickle tzatziki, and chimichurri-topped lamb chops are all on the menu at this ‘contemporary ocakbasi’ on Golborne Road in Notting Hill. The Counter has got a whole exposed brick, open-fire thing going on and is the work of a Turkish chef opening for the first time in London.
