Cassette by the Levan team will serve up Koffmann trotters, coq au vin pies and more in Covent Garden

Updated 27/8/26 with menu details and opening date

Levan has been a Peckham mainstay since 2018, with Bar Levan joining it next door in 2023. But if you haven't made it into the Peckham restaurant yet, the team behind it, Mark Gurney and Matt Bushnell, are about to open a place in the middle of town.

Cassette is opening in Covent Garden (taking over the Maiden Lane space from Grind). While its sibling restaurant in Peckham has a wider European menu, Cassette will be centred around French food, with a particular Parisian bistro influence. They've brought in Essa Fakhry as head chef (previously the founder of Note in Dublin and who was most recently at Planque).

Hot Dinners got a sneak peek at some of Essa's dishes for the launch menu and we have to say they read well (and look great). There's a homage to Pierre Koffmann in the form of stuffed pig's trotter, which might pop up on the specials board as well as a poultry take on a stargazy pie where a chicken leg sticks out of a sharing coq au vin jaune pie. As for the desserts, they've already won favour with us by putting Îles flottantes with peaches on the menu.

The drinks offering sounds just as enticing. Clearly you can't open a London restaurant right now without the promise of martinis and here they'll be featured as both small and large serves. But they are doing something a bit different by focusing their cocktail list on Calvados. If you need something to get you going, their Jet Fuel shot of Calvados, Get 27 and coffee liqueur sounds just the ticket.

Wine, too, will be a reason to come here; not least when you think that Levan once got the incredibly prestigious Star Wine List of the Year UK Jury Prize. The list here will change quarterly and if you ask nicely there will be some very special bottles that they say are "available only in tiny allocations".

The restaurant will run across two floors. Go downstairs to the dining room with the open kitchen if you want to get up close and personal with the chefs. There will also be a decent-sized terrace. 

As for the name of the restaurant, that's a nod to co-founder (and DJ) Mark Gurney's playlists. And he's brought in some rare 1970s Grundig Audiorama 8000 speakers to make sure the music here sounds as good as it can. 

Of the opening, Gurney says: "I’ve grown up travelling to France every year for family holidays, and over the last ten years both Matt and I have built lasting friendships with so many people in its hospitality scene. Cassette is, in many ways, a homage to that journey and those people." One of the inspirations for the restaurant is Bistrot des Tournelles, which we loved, so that all sounds very promising.