London Food And Drink News: 27 August 2015

By Londonist Last edited 102 months ago
London Food And Drink News: 27 August 2015
Artesian
Grubtails: Tuna tartare at Artesian

Inside this week: waffles, hot pot and smoke

Grubtails

Not content with being voted the best bar in the world several times over for its drinks, Artesian at the Langham Hotel just off Regent Street has now launched food to match. Michel Roux Jnr has consulted on the menu, which is being branded SNAX. It features 14 dishes including tuna tartare, basil, tomato and pine nuts in mini ice cream cones; seaweed-sesame sablé biscuits with salted caramel; and calamari with sweetcorn and the Japanese seasoning furikake.

A load of waffle

Street food traders Waffle On are partnering with neighbourhood coffee shop The Watch House on Bermondsey Street. As of 3 September they will be taking over the premises from 5pm every day and turning it into a one-of-a-kind waffle restaurant, serving sweet and savoury waffles with toppings such as: Asian spiced slow-roasted shredded duck with fragrant plum sauce; southern fried spicy buttermilk chicken with maple syrup butter; and Belgian chocolate sauce with fresh gooey meringue and vanilla cream. If successful, the partnership is set to run permanently.

Best of the bunch

The Good Food Guide has announced its annual list of the nation’s top 50 restaurants, with London scooping 16 of the entries. Restaurant Gordon Ramsay was the capital’s top runner at number two followed by Jason Atherton’s Pollen Street Social at three and Hibiscus at five. The list as a whole is a classic affair — we would argue rather outdated — with only two new entries. One of these is Mayfair’s Sketch (which itself isn’t at all new) and the other is The Dairy in Clapham.

Hot(pot) to trot

Shuang Shuang, a dedicated Chinese hot pot restaurant, is coming to Chinatown. Pots of stock will be sunk into each table, while a conveyor belt will wind its way around the space, filled with food to cook in it. Stocks include ‘herbal river’ made with prawn heads and lemongrass and the classic ‘ma la’ made with chillies and sichuan peppercorns. Thinly sliced beef and pork, chicken balls, wood ear mushrooms and fresh oysters will be among the food circulating for dunking. It will open on Shaftesbury Avenue in November.

Up in smoke

Following in the smoke trails of Soho’s Thai barbecue restaurant Smoking Goat, another Asian barbecue restaurant is coming to town. The team behind popular supperclub Table for 10 will open CôBa in King’s Cross in October, and are promising coal-fired barbecue and cocktails.

New openings

London’s latest openings include a branch of New York’s Greek seafood spot Estiatorio Milos and all-day coffee shop and eatery Cambridge Street Café as part of the Artist Residence hotel in Pimlico. Tomorrow marks the official launch of Vico, a no-menu Italian restaurant on Cambridge Circus from the team behind Bocca di Lupo.

Next week’s openings will include new branches of Wright Brothers in South Kensington and Homeslice pizza in Fitzrovia, plus the Old Vic theatre’s relaunched eatery Penny — which has been put together by the team behind Milk in Balham.

We round up London’s biggest food and drink news stories and the latest new and upcoming restaurant openings in this handy digest every Thursday afternoon. See our previous editions.

Also see:

The Best Food And Drink In London recommendations of where to enjoy the capital’s top food and drink, categorised by cuisine, food type and more.

Last Updated 01 September 2015