Summer has well and truly arrived, bringing full-pelt sunshine, big storm energy and a profusion of new restaurants, bars and cafes opening in London. Here are all the fresh openings we got excited about in June, from an Indian snack giant’s London restaurant debut to the latest move from Soho House’s Nick Jones.
• Buvette has been serving New York’s West Village for years – and now it has a London outpost, where the signatures include glossy steamed eggs, a range of croques (monsieur and mushroom among them) and champagne day and night.
• A trio of young chefs has taken over the kitchen at North Nineteen, a pub minutes from Upper Holloway station, where they’re doing pork scratchings with cod’s roe and lime, and fermented potato bread.
• South-east London bagel lovers have a new butter-yellow spot to get their fix: Banook Bagels has shifted from a hole-in-the-wall in Peckham to a full-fledged permanent home with seating and crowd-pleasers including its smoked chalk stream trout bagel with cream cheese.
• The group behind Foreign Exchange and Sol's has opened Dorothy’s, a beautiful Savile Row all-day caffe, bar and restaurant inspired by Europe’s old-world grand cafes.
• Jackson Boxer’s next move? Vesper, a whitewashed corner restaurant on Exmouth Market doing a ripper Martini, a menu that can’t be categorised by cuisine or country, and – like his beloved Notting Hill spot Dove – just 10 burgers a day.
• All Roads is another supper club-to-permanent-restaurant success story, doing food that weaves together Caribbean cuisine with British, European and southern American influences.
• India’s much-loved snack giant Haldiram’s has opened its first UK restaurant, where it’s doing its much-loved chaat, curries and mithai with new dishes such as sweet potato bites, a tiramisu that riffs on a popular Indian dessert and gajar halwa spring rolls.
• Nick Jones’s next move? A landmark new hotel off The Strand, with Cafe Clement, a ritzy new restaurant that’s already one of London’s buzziest just a couple of weeks since launch.
• Soho Spanish restaurant Alta has split into two, with Bar Alta – a new, more casual spot, riffing on pintxos culture.
