On the 11th floor of the new St Clement hotel on the Strand, Florence Knight is busy building what is likely to become London’s hottest restaurant. The chef, who left Clerkenwell favourite Sessions Arts Club in 2024, has been working on Lunette since and calls it a “deeply personal project.” Rumours of what will be unveiled have been circulating among committed London diners. And why wouldn’t people wonder? This is a grand, expensive space, with views stretching out over the Thames, from the Palace of Westminster to the Shard. “I fell in love with the site, it was a blank canvas,” she tells the Standard. “I came to this empty building site in a hard hat and wandered around. I thought, ‘This is where I want to be.’ It feels like the extension of an amazing home.”
Knight’s restaurant is to be the flagship at St Clement, adding to the existing Café Clement on the ground floor. It’s the first hotel from Soho House founder Nick Jones since he left the company in 2022 and is part of an enormous transformation of 180 Strand, a development that already boasts the two Michelin-starred Ikoyi, the well-loved Toklas, and Corner Shop, an Instagrammer’s paradise thanks to its dried fruit, granola and other photogenic produce.
The multi-million pound project has been led by developer Mark Wadhwa who, with Alex Eagle (his wife) and Sophie Hodges of Eagle + Hodges, have reimagined what was an overlooked brutalist site. London society has been on tenterhooks, waiting years for a luxury hotel that comes without, Jones says, “the many things that could annoy you in a hotel”. Instead of formal check-ins, paper bills and traditional hotel rituals, guests are contacted via WhatsApp before arrival. Rooms will start at £600 — pricey, but below many of London’s five-star institutions. There’s a 25-metre swimming pool, a gym and treatment rooms; the bar and co-working space feels endlessly cool, with art, records and a 3am licence. Good luck getting in post-midnight without the phone number, though.
And so here arrives a glamorous, glitzy, celeb-ready hotel without the stiffness of some of the city’s others. The penthouses are almost bafflingly luxurious. Yet nobody minds if you wear leopard-print shorts to lunch.
Upstairs, Knight says Lunette will also be relaxed, easygoing. “I like how calm it is up here. I think it feels really warm, with lovely views and a big open kitchen. There’s an energy, already a buzz to it. The design is supposed to make the place feel homely — it’s not a traditional restaurant in any sense.” It’s not a “hotel restaurant” either, she says, but a “restaurant in a hotel”.
Knight adds: “There isn’t a concept here. And, yes, hotel restaurants are often consistent and reliable. We’re not trying to be that. We’re trying to do something special, something with longevity. This is deeply personal. Like Ikoyi and Toklas, I want to have an identity.”
Knight says that while the restaurant might feel new, for her, “it’s been going on for years”. And she’s looking forward to opening. It’s scheduled for the end of September, alongside the hotel, though that could change, as hospitality ventures so often do.
“This was about cleansing myself and what I was doing, and working out who I am and what I’m doing now,” the chef says. “I’m never at ease. I need to keep on keeping on. This place is about what I want to do. It feels daunting, but I’m excited.”
Knight, who has a husband and two children, was an early proponent of London’s small plates craze 15 or so years ago. Aged just 25, she became head chef of the Venetian-inspired Soho restaurant Polpetto, where dainty dishes to share were clamoured over and talked about. What now? “I love small plates and I love sharing food. It’s a great way to eat and a liberating way to cook. There’s less structure and limitation. It’s not as regimented. So there might be a bit of that. But the restaurant will be more — not a tasting menu, but carte blanche, perhaps the Western equivalent of an omakase experience. I’ve always been spontaneous, impulsive and intuitive. I just got back from Marseille (honestly, who hasn’t?) and I loved it. It’s so moveable. I think, here, the room will write the menu.”
The push for perfection
Knight shares a few dishes she’s been working on. There’s a pomme soufflé made with smoked eel, roe and nasturtium flowers; a milk custard served with Cévennes onion sauce and baked petals with caviar; and slow-cooked pork loin with anchovies, cinsault sauce, creamed coco beans, fresh figs, fig mustard and fig oil. It’s meticulous, technical cooking.
“I’m trying to make everything as perfect as I can,” says Knight. “It starts with the producer. People have been asking me about the food here for a while now — it’s a jigsaw. It’s just whatever I think works best in this space.”
Knight has been spending almost every day at the St Clement. “I’ve been living here.” Her children sometimes join her during the day; at the weekend, she might have a quick beer after service before heading home to Camden.
I look around the restaurant again. It’s tranquil — an airy, breezy space of white walls, plush sofas and communal tables. Who knew you had to work Knight and day to achieve such calm?
“Who has balance?” Knight asks before we head back down. “It’s the way of the world now. We’re all in search of it.” Lunette might yet bring a measure of it.
