New opening

• Empire Empire brings Indian food and disco to Notting Hill

  

  17/5/23 - updated with more details about the menu

  Notting Hill continues to go from strength to strength and the latest to enter the fray there is the man behind popular Indian restaurant Gunpowder. Empire Empire is on the way. 

  Led by Gunpowder's Harneet Baweja, it's actually planned to be a mix of Indian food and disco music, with a focus on the seventies music scene in

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• Casa do Frango pick Victoria as the next home for their Piri-Piri chicken

  

  They've had great success with their Piri-Piri chicken around London and now Casa do Frango are getting ready to open their next big restaurant, this time in Victoria (taking over the space left by Jason Atherton's Hai Cenato). 

  As you might expect, the menu will be primarily all about the Frango Piri-Piri chicken, the heart of the menu which takes its inspiration from

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• House of Ming Chinese restaurant comes to London via New Delhi

  

  House of Ming is a Chinese restaurant that's big in New Delhi - and now it's opening in London. Like its Indian sibling, the restaurant is opening in a Taj Hotel, The St James's Court (you'll find that in Westminster). 

  With a focus on Sichuan and Cantonese cuisine, it looks like being a luxury affair with a menu that includes:

  • Prawn truffle siu
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• Soft & Swirly are now selling their amazing soft serve at Netil Market

  

  Last summer they teamed up with Rambutan for a successful popup in Borough Market.  And this summer soft serve purveyors Soft & Swirly have hit up another market - Netil Market.

  Over the intervening months, Sam Lowry (ex-Leilas) and Farah Kezouh have been busy working on tubbed ice cream with various folk including those at Postcard Teas and that series is now on sale at their stall in Netil consisting

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• Max Halley at the Hippodrome sees Max's Sandwiches come to Leicester Square

  

  If you haven't yet made it out to Crouch Hill to Max's Sandwich Shop then get ready to try Max Halley's sandwiches in a much more central location. He's teamed up with none other than The Hippodrome for the new Max Halley at the Hippodrome.

  It might at first seems a rather strange place for him to open - but they say it links back to the origins of the sandwich itself.

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• Gaucho is opening a new steakhouse in Covent Garden

  

  12/5/23 - updated with the opening details

  It's been a while since we had a brand new Gaucho in London, the steakhouse from Martin Williams (who also runs M Restaurants) - over a decade, it turns out. But now they have a new restaurant coming to Covent Garden.

  It's landing in a familiar site too. It's where Wahlburgers spent a few months pre-pandemic and where the great ...

• Little Kudu is coming to Peckham (while Smokey Kudu moves to Chelsea)

  

  12/5/23 - updated with the opening date for Little Kudu

  If you’re a big fan of the South-African flavours of Kudu, then we have some good news for you - their new restaurant Little Kudu is on the way. 

  Kudu first arrived on the

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• Little Pizza Hicce has arrived in Islington

  

  They only opened Hicce Hart on Chapel Market late last year, but Hicce have already expanded across the road in Islington with Little Pizza Hicce. They'd already trialled the pizza offshoot with a popup at Goodness Brewery (whose beer is available at Hicce Hart) but this is the

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• Meat The Fish sees the team behind Mayha opening in Chelsea

  

  Having stormed the Marylebone scene with their sushi spot, Mayha, the Lebanese restaurant group behind that are now gearing up to open Meat The Fish in the heart of Chelsea.

  Picked out by the World's 50 Best Discovery list and praised for their amazing sandwiches, Meat The Fish is a grocery delivery service turned restaurant chain that's hoping to serve London with dishes made using the best premium

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• Sticks'n'Sushi are heading east, opening on Shoreditch High Street

  

  Popular sushi company Sticks n Sushi are getting ready to open in Shoreditch. What will be their ninth London restaurant is taking over the restaurant space that was previously Goddard & Gibbs at the One Hundred Shoreditch hotel.

  It's a pretty big space - with room for over 200 to peruse their menu of sushi, sashimi and yakitori sticks. We're told that the new Shoreditch restaurant will have a large central bar and a

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• Crunch are bringing their banging brioche sandwiches to Spitalfields

  

  A Hot Dinners exclusive

  Last summer, a trio of sandwich obsessives began making a name for themselves with the Crunch pop-up in Shoreditch. The group comprises Alexandre Yonan and Michael Medovnikov, who'd met at college, and chef Joni Francisco. Francisco trained under Alexis Gauthier at Gauthier Soho and Nuno Mendes at Chiltern Firehouse before becoming executive chef for the Experimental Group. It took a

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• BAO Mary is the BAO group's take on a Taiwanese dumpling house beside Selfridges

  

  2/5/23 - Updated with the opening date

  Oxford Street shoppers are going to have a handy new pitstop to drop into this summer. BAO are opening up BAO Mary on James Street. They've taken over the space next to Patty & Bun (where Sidechick used to be) and this latest restaurant of theirs will focus on dumplings.

  BAO Mary, as it'll be known, will have an open kitchen, with handy

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• 20 Berkeley is coming to Mayfair

  

  2/5/23 - updated with the opening date and details of the menu

  The group behind Sumi and the recently opened Humo have a new restaurant on the horizon - 20 Berkeley. 

  It's taking over a space on the corner of Berkeley Street and being billed as offering "a sophisticated dining

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• The Campaner at Chelsea Barracks sees Barcelona's Martinez team take on London

  

  Updated 2/5/23 with new opening date

  In Barcelona, Terraza Martinez is best known for being the place to enjoy a seafood paella overlooking the sea from their position on the slopes of Montjuic. So it's going to be very interesting to see what the team behind that do with their first London restaurant.

  The Campaner (the name means bell ringer in Spanish) is taking over the

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• Sarap's Budgie Montoya brings Filipino BBQ skewers to Market Halls Oxford Street with Apoy

  

  Filipino restaurant Sarap finished its run on Heddon Street at the end of 2022 and, since then, the restaurant has been looking for a permanent home. In the meantime, after an appearance on Great British Menu, chef Ferdinand ‘Budgie’ Montoya

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