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.
