Smokin’: Mayfair newcomer Humo cooks ingredients over different woods to maximise natural flavours
(Picture: Press handout)Never let it be said that the London restaurant scene doesn’t have something for everyone. This month sees the launch of a six-course vegan tasting menu in Hackney, while on the west side of town there’s caviar pizza and disco loos in Kensington. In between, there’s a chance to explore biodynamic Greek wine in Holland Park, avant-garde wood-fired cooking in Mayfair and the welcome return of one of London’s most fondly regarded Indians in Soho; it looks like a very happy new year. Here’s where to tuck in.
Vori
If any further proof were needed that W11 is the most happening postcode for new restaurants, look no further than the decision by derivatives trader-turned-restaurateur Markos Tsimikalis to close his Shoreditch Greek, Hungry Donkey, and open Vori in Holland Park. Expect a food and drink offering based around grapes, grains and olives: sharing starters of hot and cold mezedes (saganaki, spanakopita) followed by sea bass, calamari and lamb from the charcoal grill, washed down with Greek spins on classic cocktails, an all-Greek wine list and beers from Greek microbreweries.
Opens: January 5
120 Holland Park Avenue, W11 4UA, vorigreekitchen.co.uk
Edit
From the same team behind plant-based pioneer Super Nature, this Hackney vegan promises to be as focused on seasonal ingredients and a circular, low-waste philosophy. The “root-to-fruit”, zero-waste dishes will include the likes of wild mushroom fricassée with British grains and Swiss chard, and seaweed-cured celeriac with purple potato mash, while a six-course tasting menu will offer whatever is best each day paired with natural wines, local beers and ciders. Owner Elly Ward was an architect in a previous life, so expect just as much attention lavished on the eco-friendly interiors as to how each dish looks on the plate.
Opens: Mid-January
217 Mare Street, E8 3QE, edit.london
Humo
Opening on the old Wild Honey site in Mayfair, one imagines that all that lovely panelling is not finding its way into the four-metre-long wood-fired oven of this restaurant, which takes its name from the Spanish word for “smoke”. Chef Miller Prada worked with Endo Kazutoshi at Michelin-starred Endo at the Rotunda where he was an attentive pupil of the precision of Japanese cuisine, here applied to dishes in which the provenance of the wood is as important as that of the ingredients — take, for instance, Hampshire trout marinated and smoked in juniper, then seared with white ubame oak.
Opens: January 18
12 St George Street, W1S 2FB, humolondon.com
Jacuzzi
A Jacuzzi is something warm, wet and fizzy: not perhaps the most appealing mental image for an Italian restaurant, but after the damp squib of Ave Mario, owner Big Mamma is presumably hoping that Jacuzzi summons the frothy party spirit of Gloria and Circolo Popolare rather than unrefrigerated Prosecco. This four-floor pleasure palace on High Street Ken reaches its zenith with a Sicilian-styled mezzanine with a retractable roof, to say nothing of the glitter-ball disco toilets in the basement. The food, should you be interested, takes in caviar-topped pizzette, black-truffle pasta and chocolate fondue while there is an entire wine list of Italian sparklers.
Opens: January 20
94 Kensington High Street, W8 4SH, bigmammagroup.com
Darjeeling Express
Not a new restaurant as such — and not really a new home — Asma Khan’s groundbreaking Indian returns to where it all started five years ago in Kingly Court after closing in Covent Garden. At the time, Khan expressed her wish to find a new site with an open kitchen to display her all-female team cooking their family recipes, and these new digs are bigger than the Carnaby original. There’s no menu announced as yet, though the dishes currently on offer at the Darjeeling Express pop-up at the Pembroke pub in Earl’s Court may offer a clue: paneer and sweetcorn samosa, methi chicken and beef tamatar gosht.
Opens: Late January
Kingly Court, Kingly Street, W1B 5PW, darjeeling-express.com
