The team behind Hackney restaurant Sune will open a new pub and restaurant in Smithfield Market in November, The Standard can reveal. Husband and wife team Charlie Sims and Honey Spencer, together with business partner Spencer Large, have taken on a site at Smithfield General Market, part of a decade-long redevelopment and will open in tandem with the new £70m London Museum.
The trio have taken on the part of the building that once housed Bubb’s Le Restaurant Francais, a historic bistro made famous in the 1997 film Spice World (as Le Rendezvous), and a number of former wholesale shops and storehouses. Food and wine will be overseen by Spencer and Sims, as well as incoming executive chef Charlie Tayler, who joins from Simon Rogan’s Michelin-starred London restaurant Aulis.
Tayler told The Standard that dishes will include a prawn scotch egg made with Scampi fries, smoked eel caesar salad, a fallow deer and juniper suet pudding, and a Guinness ice cream swiss roll. These will be available in the pub and dining room, which has been designed to “be a proper boozer”, Large said, and divided into a lounge bar, a saloon bar, and a snug.
“We feel nervous and excited,” Spencer, who also looks after the wine list in Eurostar’s premier carriages, told the Standard. “We’re daunted, but it’s good to be daunted. There’s energy to the project, and it’s a big one, with a lot of responsibility. We’re so proud of Sune (which will continue) but it was never going to sustain us all. We always wanted to open something bigger, more ambitious. We also want to make the place super accessible. We’ll be making our own house wine and we want the place to feel like it’s been there forever — not so much like a JKS sort of model.”
Glasses of wine will start at around £8, while a pint of Guinness will cost £7.50; smaller dishes will float around £10 and mains will start from £20, though there’ll be pricier whole fish and premium cuts of meat too. Inside, the pub features dark wooden panelling, upcycled tables and chairs, exposed brick and old photographs. The lighting will be dim, almost Dickensian, harking back to the building’s Victorian roots. The team said the plan is to also be accessible.
“We’re so proud of Sune but it was never going to sustain us all”
Honey Spencer
Sims said: “When we first saw the building, we just thought it was incredible — an imposing entrance, big pillars, and lots of quiet corners and nooks inside. It has so much character. It lends itself to a bustling pub, and is geared up for proper vertical drinking. I think it has personality and our job is to make sure it has an identity.”
Sims said as well as the bistro, the site was home to a tailor’s, a dairy shop, and a grocery. It's expansive, with more parts of the building to be converted into further spaces next year. Also upcoming is a cocktail bar, Shambles, and a chef’s table concept on a mezzanine level above the dining room.
The original sign to Bubb’s, a projecting yellow block with bold black lettering, is believed to still exist, the last surviving relic of the venue that came before. It is possibly under the guardianship of a man called Richard, who got married there in the late 1990s.
The Poet will open in November; The Poet, House 5 London Museum, General Market, Farringdon Street, EC4A 4AZ
