There is, apparently, no such thing as too many Italian restaurants in London, only insufficiently ambitious floorplans. Olympia is about to test the theory.
The latest arrival will have room for 500 people and ovens capable of turning out 300 pizzas an hour – because sometimes the answer to “does London really need another Italian?” is simply to build one large enough to count as infrastructure.
Elsewhere, things are happening on a slightly more human scale. Romy Gill is finally opening her first permanent London restaurant, Lisa Goodwin-Allen is bringing a taste of the Mediterranean to the gardens behind Selfridges, Covent Garden is getting a restaurant whose chef genuinely does own the farm and Mayfair has found, against considerable odds, room for another steakhouse.
And if none of that appeals, America is sending sandwiches.
Juno, Olympia
Olympia’s £1.3bn redevelopment has decided what west London really needs is an Italian restaurant roughly the size of a small principality.
Juno opens on 16 October inside the Grade II-listed National Hall, spreading itself across 11,500 sq ft with 265 dining covers and room for 500 people overall. Its owners are calling it Britain’s largest Italian restaurant, a title presumably awarded by measuring restaurants until everybody got bored.
There is a stage, a DJ booth and a 10-seat pizza counter fitted with ovens capable of knocking out 300 pizzas an hour. The food itself sounds rather less industrial: crab linguine, tomato and mozzarella paccheri, osso buco alla Milanese, tiramisu and pistachio gelato.
Subtle it is not. But subtle restaurants do not generally seat 500 people.
Opens 16 October | 50 Hammersmith Road, Olympia, London W14 8UX | Website
Romy Gill at The Pem, St James’s
Rather more compelling is Romy Gill’s return to a permanent restaurant kitchen.
From 17 September, Gill takes over The Pem at Conrad London St James, six years after closing Romy’s Kitchen in Gloucestershire. Despite years spent as one of Britain’s most recognisable Indian chefs, this will be her first permanent London restaurant.
The menu travels through Punjab, Bengal, Kerala, Rajasthan and Kashmir, with butter chicken, samosa chaat, sukha crab with coconut and curry leaves, hand-dived scallops with raw mango, ghee-roasted quail and slow-braised lamb with Kashmiri morels.
Gill has spent the intervening years writing, broadcasting and travelling. London has taken its time giving her a dining room. Better late than never.
Opens 17 September | The Pem, Conrad London St James, 22-28 Broadway, London SW1H 0BH | Website
Pearl, Mayfair
Behind Selfridges, where even the electricity substation has become valuable restaurant real estate, The Beaumont is opening Pearl.
Lisa Goodwin-Allen oversees the food at the standalone Mediterranean restaurant, which occupies part of the raised Brown Hart Gardens beside the hotel and comes with a large terrace overlooking Mayfair.
The pitch is Italy, Spain and Greece: oysters, seafood, small plates, family-style dinners and plenty of aperitivo. The surrounding gardens have been landscaped too, presumably in the hope that Brown Hart Gardens can be persuaded to feel like the Riviera if everybody commits hard enough.
Pearl had initially been expected to open this week. Its website now says “late September”, so perhaps make lunch plans elsewhere for another week or two.
Opens late September | Brown Hart Gardens, London W1K 8UH | Website
Nettle, Covent Garden
Farm-to-table restaurants are common enough these days that the phrase mostly means somebody has met a farmer. Will Devlin has the advantage of actually being one.
Nettle opens on Wednesday on the roof of The Conduit, with much of its produce coming from Devlin’s farm and butchery in Kent. He is best known for The Small Holding, where the same grow-it-yourself approach helped win a Michelin green star.
A custom charcoal grill anchors the menu, which includes house-cured meats, hake croquettes, wild rabbit, Kent lamb and whole day-boat fish.
Despite living on top of a members’ club, Nettle itself is open to everyone. There is also a rooftop terrace, for whichever three afternoons of September London chooses to cooperate.
Opens 16 September | Fifth Floor, The Conduit, 6 Langley Street, London WC2H 9JA | Website
Cordelia’s, Mayfair
Mayfair is opening another steakhouse. Of course it is.
Cordelia’s has taken over the former L’Atelier Robuchon site on Clarges Street, with ex-Le Petit Beefbar chef Jordi Sebastianelli in charge of an open charcoal grill.
British beef is dry-aged in house, while other options include Galician beef, Finnish Sashi and Italian Parmesan-fed beef, for anyone who has ever looked at an ordinary steak and thought it insufficiently international.
Later in the evening there are DJs and live music. At some point, presumably, somebody eats.
Coming soon | 6 Clarges Street, London W1J 8AE | Website
Jersey Mike’s, Soho
Finally, another vast American food chain has decided Britain is ready for it.
Jersey Mike’s will open its first European restaurant on Argyll Street in Soho later this autumn, bringing with it a North American estate of more than 3,300 sites and plans for another three central London branches almost immediately.
The chain has been making submarine sandwiches since 1956, filling fresh bread with meat and cheese sliced to order and dressing the lot with red wine vinegar and oil. Its UK and Ireland franchise agreement could eventually produce as many as 400 restaurants.
London has lately become something of a finishing school for American fast-food chains. Five Guys came, Popeyes came, Dave’s Hot Chicken came. Jersey Mike’s will presumably arrive to an orderly queue of people happy to spend £14 on lunch and tell TikTok whether it was worth it.
Subway, meanwhile, may wish to check the locks.
Opens late autumn | Palladium House, 1-4 Argyll Street, London W1F 7TA | Website
