It was a very good year: Jimi Famurewa
(Picture: Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd)If 2022 began with cautious optimism among the hospitality sector, then it ends with a familiar buffet of existential challenges: soaring energy and food costs; never-ending staff shortages; rail strikes. The mood has generally been one of tightening belts, and a slow awakening to the fact that perma-crisis is now a part of our dining reality.
And yet if the post-pandemic era has taught us anything then it is this: London restaurateurs can conjure magic in defiance of even the grimmest odds. For all the doomy economic pronouncements, my foremost memories of eating out this past 12 months are of grinning faces, free-flowing cocktails and dining rooms that were uniformly mobbed. Here, then, are my 12 favourite new restaurants from an especially vibrant and varied crop of openings.
