- London Museum and Green & Fortune will open four food and drink concepts in partnership with chef Robin Gill when the museum opens at its new home in Smithfield in November. Gill will serve as food curator, working alongside Green & Fortune chef director Dan Rampat on the culinary direction across the new venues, which include flagship restaurant Clerks House, the Temperance Cocoa Rooms café, The Roost - an incubator space with a rotating residency for emerging culinary talent - and Bartholomew’s bar, created with Mr Lyan Studio. The 140-cover Clerks House, which will be located within the museum’s General Market building, will offer all-day dining, with a menu celebrating London’s culinary heritage while showcasing seasonal British produce.
- The team behind French restaurant Camille will open a new restaurant in Farringdon later this year, serving British and Irish cuisine. Thought to be taking over the former Club Gascon site in Smithfield, the restaurant will be led by Camille founders Tom Hill and Clare Lattin alongside Camille head chef Elliot Hashtroudi. Due to open in late autumn, the as yet unnamed restaurant will draw on Hashtroudi’s grandmother’s cooking and explore old regional British and Irish dishes using ingredients from across the British Isles while also celebrating Victorian food traditions. The opening will mark a return to Farringdon for Hashtroudi, who previously worked at St John.
- The hospitality sector has welcomed the Government’s announcement of a 20% reduction in business rates for pubs, social clubs and live music venues in England from April next year. The relief, announced by Prime Minister Andy Burnham, is expected to save a typical pub around £1,100 in tax and benefit almost 32,000 venues. No 10 says the cut, which will cost around £100m, will be funded through a review of tax reliefs for businesses ‘such as vape shops’. Industry bodies including the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA), the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) and UKHospitality have welcomed the move, although UKHospitality urged the government to extend similar support to the wider hospitality sector, arguing that restaurants are facing many of the same pressures.
- Endo Kazutoshi will return to a permanent restaurant space with the launch of ENDO, a 10-seat omakase restaurant, and Moga, a listening bar inspired by Japan’s embrace of modernity and Western influence throughout the 20th century. Located in a two-storey Chelsea townhouse formerly occupied by Michelin-starred Five Fields, the ground floor space will be home to ENDO, which will serve a multi-course omakase experience that draws on the third-generation sushi master’s traditional Japanese training, with a menu focused on ‘purity, seasonality and discipline’. Details of the menu are being kept under wraps, but it will be dairy-free with a greater emphasis placed on dashi. All sushi courses will exclusively use wild-caught fish from the British Isles, sourced largely through Endo’s suppliers on the west coast of the UK, while key menu components will continue to be brought over from Japan, such as nori seaweed, wasabi, soy sauce and rice, all produced exclusively for Kazutoshi. Upstairs, Moga will pair a Japanese hi-fi listening bar with a cocktail menu built around tea.
- A new three-part documentary series will explore the rise of chefs Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal and their influence on Britain’s restaurant industry. The Rise of the Rockstar Chef, which will air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer later this year, will examine how the trio helped reshape fine dining during the ‘Cool Britannia’ era, changing perceptions of chefs and transforming the UK’s restaurant scene. Made by Studio Ramsay Global, the series will feature interviews with White, Ramsay and Blumenthal, alongside contributions from food critics, maîtres d’ and former commis chefs who witnessed the rivalries and feuds. The series will culminate in an on-screen reunion, bringing the three chefs together for the first time in decades to reflect on the defining moments of their careers and the ‘legacy of an era that transformed British dining’.