Specific look: the restaurant could hardly be accused of maximalism
(Picture: Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd)This does not really seem like the era for restaurant empire-building. Mortally-imperilled businesses are openly pleading for bookings. Barely anyone has the staffing capacity to open at lunchtime. And last month, Sunda Kitchen — a Pan-Asian affair on the Covent Garden site of what was once the ill-starred Wahlburgers — closed so abruptly that I didn’t even have time to go in and pronounce on its relative chances of survival in a seemingly cursed location (not great, as it turns out).
So on the face of it, the launch of Kuro Eatery — a new, dining-focused spin-off of Notting Hill’s minimalist Kuro Coffee — looks like counter-intuitive boldness. Throw in the fact that the team is also converting its nearby independent magazine shop, Kuro Kiosk, into a bakery (with plans to install urban beehives and vegetable gardens on vacant rooftops) and that boldness maybe edges into doomed naivety.
