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London’s had a busy fortnight.
The National Trust has acquired a 200-year-old dining room worth a measly £11m. The Dorchester’s former head chef is opening his own place named, naturally, after his dog. And one of the capital’s most gloriously unruly cooks is making a triumphant return.
Meanwhile in Knightsbridge, Jaguar has decided that shopping for a luxury car should come with a Michelin-starred bacon sandwich. Quite who is buying the latest £130,000 electric Jag on the strength of the lunch menu remains to be seen.
There’s good news for anyone who’s struggled to get a table at Rochelle Canteen: it’s (temporarily) coming to Covent Garden. A somewhat cursed Mayfair church crypt is turning into an Eastern European steakhouse with pierogi and a suitable amount of vodka to wash away sins. And there is a new reason to make the trek all the way to Kew that doesn’t involve horticulture.
October, it seems, isn’t finished with us yet.
Rules has become a national treasure – officially
It survived the Blitz, nine monarchs and several centuries of changing tastes. Now, Rules’ latest achievement is to become a National Trust property.
Founded as an oyster house by Thomas Rule in 1798, the Covent Garden institution has had its historic building donated to the charity by JP Mayhew, who bought it in 1984. The “gift”, valued at around £11m, includes the Grade II-listed interiors and the extraordinary collection of menus, paintings, photographs and memorabilia accumulated over more than two centuries within them.
Don’t worry, it’s not about to become some staid museum situation with National Trust donation boxes, scones and weak tea. The restaurant side of the business, bought by Ricky McMenemy in 2022, isn’t changing. The Trust will become his landlord and the rent will help fund the conservation of the site.
Restaurants of this vintage are an endangered species in London, so it’s a conveniently lovely arrangement. Charles Dickens, Edward VII and David Bowie have all eaten beneath its chandeliers. Future generations will now be able to do the same.
Lee Tiernan is back – armed with free sandwiches
There was understandable mourning when Black Axe Mangal, latterly known as FKBAM, “paused” last December. Lee Tiernan’s Islington restaurant was never particularly known for behaving itself. That’s why we liked it.
And that’s why his return to 156 Canonbury Road, 10 months later, makes more sense than it might first appear. Normal service will not resume. Instead, he’s doing a two-day sandwich shop pop-up with Irish dairy brand Kerrygold on 23 and 24 October.
Is it just a cream cheese promotion? Absolutely. Do we care? Probably not. The sandwiches are a good deal more interesting than the usual activation nonsense.
There’s char siu-cured Irish bacon with garlic and herb cream cheese on very fashionable Dusty Knuckle sourdough. There’s mapo tofu in a Papo’s bagel. And smoked cod roe with wild Irish seaweed, trout caviar and cream cheese on squid ink bread.
All 600 sandwiches will be free (free!), with 300 sensibly available on each day on a first-come, first-served basis. There will almost certainly be a queue.
After that, Tiernan and his wife and business partner Kate plan to reopen properly with an “entirely new” restaurant concept. Details are still scarce, but London could do with having him back.
Tom Booton becomes another chef to name a restaurant after his dog
After six years at the helm of The Grill at The Dorchester hotel, Tom Booton is finally going it alone – or at least with his dog. His long-awaited debut restaurant, Ralphie’s, will open on Pimlico Road in Belgravia in late November, in the former Enoteca Turi site.
It’s named after his Maltipoo Ralphie, which should give some indication of the welcome awaiting four-legged customers, and joins a raft of other chefs who can’t quite separate the kitchen from the kennel. There’s Kerridge’s Georgie bar, Scott Pattinson’s Albers, Rudy’s Pizza and Markus Thesleff’s Los Mochis (his dog) and Juno (his sister’s dog).
The name isn’t just an honorary mention. Dogs will also have their own menu, with treats like pigs in blankets, crispy fish skin rolls and a “Chew Board”. All served in their own specially made china bowls. Ralphie is yet to provide a review.
Human customers, meanwhile, can expect a modern British bistro with a reassuring comfort food flavour. There’ll be crispy cod cheeks with warm tartare sauce, pork and mushroom pie with charcuterie sauce and a vanilla soft-serve sandwich with warm hazelnut and fudge sauce. On reflection, one wonders why he didn’t call it “Sauce”.
Sunday lunch leans particularly hard into comfort with a shepherd’s pie-stuffed Yorkshire pudding with the lamb. Obviously not one for the roast dinner purists but try keeping your dog away from that.
The fine print is more familiar: 40 seats, a terrace, a private dining room called The Den filled with Booton’s own vinyl collection. And a beef Wellington trolley. Because you can’t open a restaurant these days without one.
It all sounds considerably more relaxed than The Dorchester, though from a glance at the dog menu, one suspects Ralphie might have particularly high standards.
Rochelle Canteen is spending winter in Covent Garden
Rochelle Canteen has become a permanent fixture on lists of restaurants that are notoriously hard to book. Thankfully for anyone who’s spent time trawling OpenTable, the Hendersons are heading west.
Until January, you’ll be able to find a version of the restaurant at Twenty8 NoMad, beneath the enormous glass ceiling of the NoMad hotel in Covent Garden.
Margot Henderson’s son Hector, heir to the St John throne and head chef at Rochelle for the past few years, is teaming up with NoMad exec chef Carlo Scotto to provide a monthly changing menu of Rochelle Canteen food in theatreland.
For October, diners can expect devilled crab on toast, pumpkin and sage soup, chicken, leek and tarragon pie and pear and almond tart with creme fraiche. Future menus are rumoured to include pheasant and mushroom pie, deep-fried tripe with ketchup and baked goat’s cheesecake.
It’ll cost you £55 a head, which isn’t half bad for that stretch of London, and you can get it Monday to Saturday from 4pm, making it an ideal drop-in before a show.
It’s quite a change of scenery from Rochelle’s famously laid-back Shoreditch courtyard. Fortunately, the cooking seems unlikely to have acquired any unnecessary airs and graces.
A Mayfair church crypt gets an Eastern European chophouse
To call a crypt cursed seems a bit on the nose but the restaurant beneath St George’s Church on Hanover Square has had a hard time finding a permanent resident. It’s not thought to have anything to do with the ghosts.
Brad Carter was supposed to make his London debut there, before leaving the project. Its most recent incarnation, Aldo Zilli’s suitably named Undercroft, lasted less than six months. That hasn’t put off Misha Zelman, co-founder of Burger & Lobster and Goodman.
Elezar, opening on 2 November, will be an Eastern European chophouse drawing on the Ukrainian and Polish heritage of head chef Erik Miotto, formerly of Cycene and Akoko, and consulting chef David Bury.
Expect pierogi stuffed with cheese or beef and mushrooms, open rye sandwiches topped with herring, anchovy or a healthy dollop of caviar, and an assortment of steaks, chops and fish. Even more interesting than the former residents (dead or alive) of the place is the pricing: all main courses will cost £28. In Mayfair, that saves you a conversation with your bank.
There will also be meat-ageing cabinets, counter seats overlooking the butchery and a drinks list featuring pickle Martinis, Polish wines and plenty of vodka to wash away any sins.
There are certainly worse things to find lurking beneath a church.
Jaguar has opened a cafe – with a Michelin-starred chef
Buying a luxury car used to mean nothing more than visiting a leather-scented showroom, negotiating with an enthusiastic salesperson and perhaps a disappointing coffee. Jaguar has thrown in a bacon sandwich with serious pedigree to seal the deal. One wonders what this says about their sales technique.
Its new Knightsbridge flagship has opened Cafe Eighty-One and has shipped in Michael O’Hare, the Yorkshire chef best known for his Michelin-starred restaurant The Man Behind the Curtain and appearances on Great British Menu.
There shall be no disappointing coffees to be found. Instead, there’ll be a bacon sandwich made with cured Iberico pork secreto, spiced ketchup and dashi mayonnaise. Other options include eggs with brioche soldiers that come with your choice of caviar or truffle, obviously, and a lobster roll with Amalfi lemon mayonnaise.
They’re also trying to seduce you with afternoon tea, though the scone comes “oloid” shaped, so as to deliver cream, jam and scone in a single bite. Now that’s what I call proper engineering.
They’ll let you walk in and there’s no requirement to buy a car on your way out. Which is fortunate, as lunch is likely to be the more affordable indulgence.
Kew gets the Great British Menu treatment
A chophouse opening in a crypt might make one wonder whether London has run out of conventional places to open restaurants. Not to worry: Abbie Hendren, former head chef at Sally Abé’s Teal and a recent Great British Menu contestant, is opening one in a tipi.
Her new home is Trindle Stores, a family-run grocery shop and cafe in Kew, where the kitchen will live in a cone-shaped tent in the garden. The smoke flaps should come in handy, at least.
The menu will be British and Mediterranean, with a bit of Hendren’s Australian upbringing thrown in. Dishes include beef fat waffles with creme fraiche, garden herbs and trout roe; devilled crab crumpets; ember-roasted pumpkin with brown butter and pickled walnut; and wild mushrooms on toast.
Kew’s horticulture identity hasn’t been entirely abandoned. The ingredients will come, in part, from the nearby Chiswick House Kitchen Garden.
They’re starting with breakfast and lunch Thursday to Sunday, with dinner service expected to arrive in the spring. There’ll also be supper clubs.
A tent in a garden behind a grocer – close to a much bigger and much more famous garden – might not seem like the obvious move for a chef of Hendren’s pedigree. But bigger doesn’t always mean better.
Bubala is bringing its vegetarian feast to Covent Garden
If this week has taught us anything, perhaps it’s that Covent Garden is where it’s at. Native Londoners who’ve been avoiding it all their lives might need to give it a second chance.
Bubala’s fourth and largest site, with room for around 90 inside and 30 outside, opens today on Garrick Street, taking over the former Lima Cantina.
Marc Summers launched the first one in Spitalfields in 2019 and has since acquired an enthusiastic following for making vegetarian food that doesn’t spend its entire life reminding you it’s vegetarian. The Middle Eastern-inspired vegetarian restaurant has become so adept at not making meat substitutes the centre of attention that passersby might not even realise there’s no meat on offer.
Its confit potato latkes with toum, halloumi with chamomile and fennel honey and hummus with burnt butter have become signatures. On Garrick Street, they’ll be trying out grilled baby corn with pilpelchuma butter.
Pre-theatre dining often involves an alarming amount of money for rather ordinary food. This newest Bubala seems intent on changing that.
