What Are London’s Best New Restaurants?
London has always had its great restaurants, but while there are various famous establishments with their celebrity chefs and Michelin stars, a city as large and dynamic as the British capital is bound to keep on producing fine new venues, each with its own signature dishes, atmosphere and unique style.
This year is no different, with connoisseurs of the culinary scene seeking out many great new establishments. Finding them has not been a problem, although, inevitably, not everyone will agree on what is the best.
London’s Evening Standard newspaper started this year with a bunch of suggestions, noting that one of the big new openings was to be Lisboeta, a Portuguese restaurant run by Nuno Mendes, a chef already responsible for highly popular menus in three other restaurants over the previous 15 years, standing the test of time in a way, the paper noted, few do.
Other stars of 2022 include Bjorn Frantzen, a Michelin-starred chef whose latest venue included one of three restaurants in Harrods. Not to be outdone, Selfridges opened Adesse, a vegan restaurant that fans of plant-based food will clearly have to visit.
One Michelin star-bagger has made 2022 the year to revive an existing restaurant, with Brett Graham bringing the Ledbury back to Notting Hill by popular demand, while another, Jean-Bernard Fernandez-Versini, is offering a fascinating Japanese-Italian fusion experience at Itaku on Great Portland Street.
Now we are midway through 2022, there have been more new establishments appearing around the city. Eater London has highlighted several outstanding additions to the London culinary scene. Suffice to say, the fact that Lisboeta is also on this lists suggests Mr Mendes has nailed it once again.
Many others make the list of 15 great new establishments. There is Haringey Corbacisi, a Turkish and Kurdish restaurant the guide describes as “the most exciting thing to open on this storied stretch of the A105 in a good while,” or Caravel, a restaurant on a boat in Islington that serves a “duck croquette whose shape might leave diners quacking”.
Further down the list come some fascinating new names. Frog Bakery in Peckham involves neither frogs being baked nor trained amphibians doing the baking. You’ll get great beef, but not frog’s legs.
Also in Peckham, Mambow provides wonderful Malaysan food, while Laphet West End brings Burmese cuisine to Covent Garden for the first time, matching the styles and offerings of its existing branch in Shoreditch.
Luxury London published its own list of new restaurants in May, with some glamorous top-of-the range venues opening up.
Examples include Israeli-inspired cuisine at The Barbary Next Door in Covent Garden, South American fare at INCA in Soho and Italian food at Bardo St James in St James’s. All of these are locations where the interiors offer a palatial setting. If the food is even half as good, it will be exceptional.
The expansive nature of these lists, from the top-of-the-range to simply the best-of-its-kind, not to mention the huge range of national, international and fusion-style cuisines on offer, demonstrates once again the vibrancy of the ever-changing London restaurant scene.
If you need restaurant server aprons, contact us today.