Want to know which restaurants are opening soon in London?
Allow us to whet your appetite.
Because in the next few months we can look forward to a Central London eatery from one of the capital’s best-loved nose-to-tail restaurants; an IRL solo debut from a Tik Tok sensation; the arrival of several award-laden international chefs; and a bricks-and-mortar double act from the highly popular Dumpling Shack – to name but a few.
Take a look for yourself…
Want to go somewhere that’s actually open, like, now? Check out our pick of London’s Best Recently Opened Restaurants.
Fairgame | Canary Wharf
In London’s booming activity bar scene, it seems like any retro, nostalgia-laced experience is fair game. So it’s surprising that it’s taken this long for us to get a cocktail-drenched take on an old-school funfair, landing in Canary Wharf…
Opening: 3rd October
Soft launch? 50% off games and a complimentary welcome drink, 27th September – 2nd October
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Speedboat Bar | Chinatown
They say you should quit while you’re ahead.
So we’re very lucky that Luke Farrell doesn’t subscribe to that philosophy.
He’s the chef behind the supremely well-received Plaza Khao Gaeng, the Southern Thai eatery that’s the darling of the new-look Arcade Food Hall – and now he’s pairing up with JKS once more for a new venture in Soho, bringing you the dishes of Bangkok’s Chinatown…
Opening: 29th September
Soft launch? Nudge Member preview now sold out.
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The Den | Soho
Saying The Den has a rich history is a bit like saying Jeff Bezos has a ‘comfortable’ income.
Since opening in the mid-sixties (when it was known as The Marquee Club) the venue’s seen residencies from everyone who was anyone, including The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and David Bowie… and now this piano bar speakeasy is finally reopening.
Opening: 30th September
Soft launch? Nudge Member-exclusive preview now sold out.
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Mayha | Marylebone
A brand new omakase sushi spot is coming to London, all the way from… Lebanon. Mayha will be the sister restaurant to the eponymous original in Beirut, whose chefs Jurek Wasio and Yuichi Nakaya are coming over to run the show here…
Opening: Late September
Soft launch? None yet announced
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Straker’s | Notting Hill
Thomas Straker has worked in the kitchens at Dinner By Heston, The Dorchester and – most famously – his own house. Which is where he makes his crazy popular TikTok vids, of course. And now he’s about to get his very own restaurant in Notting Hill…
Opening: September
Soft launch? None announced.
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Restaurant St. Barts | Barbican
The team behind Nest & Fenn are opening a new restaurant this autumn with a rather unusual concept. Because the plan is to have the different courses of the tasting menu in different areas of the restaurant itself. Sounds like quite a moving experience…
Opening: 5th October
Soft launch? No, but bookings are now open
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Eline | Hoxton
Having a former Popham’s staff member is always a good start when you’re opening a new restaurant.
Having two is even better.
So Eline is going to be starting with a deck fairly well-stacked in its flavour, because the show runners – messers Alex Reynolds and Maria Viviani – both met while manning pans & filling wine glasses at Hackney’s vaunted carbohydrate paradise…
Opening: 5th October, bookings open now
Soft launch? None announced
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St John Marylebone | Marylebone
It’s been seven years since the opening of the last St. John restaurant. So it should come as a spot of very good news that there is, at last, another branch of the pioneering eatery hitting Marylebone later this year…
Opening: 18th October
Soft launch? None yet announced
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Mr Ji Camden | Camden
After the highly creative, and highly successful first branch of Mr Ji in Soho, Camden is getting the next member of the clan. It’ll be a much larger space, with a bigger menu to boot (still courtesy of the team behind TĀ TĀ Eatery, and still featuring their legendary take on the Sunday roast)…
Opening: 18th October
Soft launch? None yet announced
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Dumpling Shack & Sichuan Fry | London Fields
Dumpling Shack is about to become a Dumpling Bricks and Mortar Restaurant – but they’re keeping the name, and their cult shengjianbao (pan-fried bao dumplings filled with soupy pork & gelatin). That’ll all be down in the basement, while upstairs will be a permanent version of their Sichuan Fry outfit, specialising in indulgent fried chicken sandwiches with Sichuan flavours.
Opening: 20th October
Soft launch? None yet announced
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Supa Ya Ramen Peckham | Peckham
Noods just in: Hackney’s cult ‘traditionally inauthentic’ ramen shop is heading south of the river for its sophomore branch, opening a second site in Peckham this October…
Opening: Mid-October
Soft launch? None yet announced
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Cycene | Shoreditch
It might have seemed that Blue Mountain School had reached its peak with Michelin-starred Mãos. But now the founders have announced its replacement, Cycene, where ex-Portland chef Theo Clench is set to serve up ten-course, seafood-heavy tasting menus…
Opening: 25th October
Soft launch? None
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Bar Swift Borough | Borough Market
Here’s one to file under ‘wildly exciting’. The cocktail bar-shaped hole in London Bridge is about to be skilfully filled by none other than Bar Swift, the critically acclaimed, award-winning joint venture between a quartet of mixology legends…
Opening: October
Soft launch? None yet announced
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Dorian | Notting Hill
When it opens this October, Dorian is going to be a couple of streets over from Portobello Road, and it’s going to be run by an absolutely stellar team. The chef has worked at places like Kitchen Table (two Michelin Stars) and Frantzén (three Michelin Stars). Hell, even the bartender is fresh from Core by Clare Smyth (three Michelin Stars)…
Opening: October
Soft launch? TBC
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Rambutan | Borough Market
Rambutan is a restaurant from chef Cynthia Shanmugalingam, who was born in the UK to Sri Lankan parents. Here she’ll be exploring her roots with a Sri Lankan restaurant that, in classic British style, plucks bits and bobs from other national cuisines, too. And in advance of all that, we’re got Rambutan Ice, serving Sri Lankan soft serve from a hatch in the restaurant’s fronting…
Opening: October
Soft launch? Not announced, but there is soft-serve from Rambutan Ice.
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Stem & Glory | Broadgate Circle
Stem & Glory is a vegan restaurant that first laid down roots in Cambridge. People loved it. It won a lot of awards. And when they decided to branch out and crowdfund a London location, it took them a whole six hours to hit their funding goal. And now they’ve decided to do it again…
Opening: October
Soft launch? None yet announced
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Casa do Frango | Mayfair
There’s a lot you can get in Mayfair. Oysters? Check. Steak? You got it. Michelin-starred fare? It’s there by the bucketload. But it’s been sorely lacking in low-key, convivial, well-priced Portuguese chicken spots… until now.
Opening: 14th October
Soft launch? Yes, sign up for updates here
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Nessa | Soho
Tom Cenci left his position overseeing the menu at Stoney Street in April, and the city wept. Well, a few die-hard foodies did. But the good news is that he’s opening his own Modern British bistro in Soho this autumn…
Opening: Autumn 2022
Soft launch? None yet announced
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Socca | Mayfair
Chef Claude Bosi has won two Michelin Stars at every restaurant he’s ever run. And now he’s opening another one. It’s going to be called Socca, and it’ll be landing in Mayfair this summer. Expect a Southern French, Mediterranean-style bistro with plenty of good wine…
Opening: Autumn 2022
Soft launch? Probably not.
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Dorothy & Marshall | Bromley
Is an old courthouse a good place for a restaurant? You be the judge. At least you can be when Dorothy and Marshall opens in the Grade II listed Bromley Town Hall’s former courthouse this Autumn…
Opening: Autumn 2022
Soft launch? None announced
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Elis | Bethnal Green
Rafael Cagali’s got two Michelin stars, and soon he’ll have two restaurants, too – he’s opening Elis, a Brazilian-Italian eatery in the same building as his lauded Da Terra. And to cap it all off, he’s got the Noble Rot team picking out wines…
Opening: Autumn 2022
Soft launch? None yet announced
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Otto | Piccadilly
Fresh pasta: on the top of most people’s favourite food lists, except for the Michelin man. Well, that may all be about to change, because Phil Howard – who’s won as many stars as his contemporaries Gordon Ramsay and Michel Roux Jr. – is turning his pasta delivery service into a bricks-and-mortar restaurant this autumn…
Opening: November
Soft launch? None yet announced
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Akub | Notting Hill
Celebrated Palestinian chef Fadi Kattan is coming to London to open his second restaurant. It’s going to be called Akub (named after Fadi’s favourite vegetable, a delicious and tiny, wild artichoke) and you’ll find it in a surprisingly quiet side street off Notting Hill Gate…
Opening: November
Soft launch? None yet announced
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Lino | Queen’s Park
Barbican’s sustainability-focussed restaurant is getting reused and recycled after having to close last year. It’ll be getting a new lease of life in a striking building on the increasingly trendy restaurant nucleus that is Lonsdale Road in Queen’s Park…
Opening: December
Soft launch? None yet announced
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Big Mamma | Kensington
The next project to join the Big Mamma family of big restaurants – Gloria, Circolo Popolare and Ave Mario – is… untitled. We don’t know when it’ll open, which region of Italy will inspire the food, or what insane, eyeball-busting decor they’ll stick all over the place this time. But we do know that it’ll be in an old bank on High Street Kensington, it’ll probably serve their famous cheese wheel carbonara, and it’ll probably won’t be easy to get a table…
Opening: Sometime in 2022
Soft launch? Watch this space.
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JOIA | Battersea
The next restaurant to open at Battersea Power Station is generating a lot of hype. And it’s understandable, because the man behind it – Henrique Sá Pessoa – is coming over from his double Michelin-starred restaurant in Lisbon to run the show…
Opening: Sometime in 2022
Soft launch? None yet announced
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The Patio | Smithfield
Despite the name, when it opens later this year, The Patio won’t actually have a patio. But it will have 5,340 sq ft of restaurant spread out over a five storey building with its own roof terrace… and a modern Nigerian menu courtesy of Lagos-born restaurateur and chef Brandi Akpobome.
Opening: Sometime in 2022
Soft launch? None yet announced
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Raffles London at the OWO | Westminster
So, here’s one to file under ‘quite ambitious’. The Old War Office (so-called because it’s the old war office) over on Whitehall is being refurbed & reimagined as a hotel with eleven bars and restaurants inside it. Yes, eleven. Whatever happens, the odds are at least one of them will be good…
Opening: Late 2022
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Saltie Girl Seafood Bar | Mayfair
They say a picture says a thousand words. And in this case, about 999 of those words are just noises. This beurre-blanc drizzled lobster roll is from one of the most famous seafood joints in Boston, and this year it’s making the long trip across the pond…
Opening: Late 2022
Soft launch? None yet announced
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Bossa | Marylebone
Brazilian super-chef Alberto Landgraf – the man behind one of the 50 Best Restaurants in the World – has announced his anticipated next move: a restaurant just off Oxford Street called Bossa. Sounds like he’ll be taking charge of London’s food scene…
Opening: Late 2022
Soft launch? Unlikely…
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Björn Frantzén at Harrods | Knightsbridge
Some people are born to be chefs. Some people are Björn. This man is both. And next year, he’s taking a break from running the 6th best restaurant in the world to open his first spot in the UK…
Opening: TBC
Soft launch? Unlikely…
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Long Chim | TBC
Long Chim has been a long time coming. It’s David Thompson’s first London restaurant since opening Nahm back in 2001, which not only won a Michelin star within six months, but was the first Thai restaurant in Europe to be awarded one full-stop. And having won dozens of other accolades since, and opening his legendary Long Chim restaurants in Singapore, Perth and Sydney, one is finally opening in London…
Opening: TBC
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Alkebulan | TBC
After a barnstorming debut in Dubai, chef Alexander Smalls is launching his African food hall both in London and in his local neighbourhood, Harlem. It’ll showcase around ten up-and-coming chefs of African heritage, each working with a different regional speciality or culinary tradition, and it’ll all be complemented by artwork and live music, too…
Opening: TBC
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Arcade Food Hall Battersea | Battersea
Battersea Power Station is almost ready to emerge from its £9b (yes, billion) renovation. And after the announcement that the food & drink offering here would include… drum roll… a Joe & The Juice, it seems that the people behind it all have realised it was a little underpowered. So it’s a relief to hear that London resto heavyweights JKS are going to be opening a follow-up to their food market Arcade there next year, with a load of excellent new vendors in tow…
Opening: 2023
Soft launch? Possibly
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Little Cellars | Peckham
The team behind the wonderful Peckham Cellars are opening a new sibling, Little Cellars. It’ll also be a wine bar, and it’ll also have some lovely small plates. Of course only one of them will get to be the best Cellar.
Opening: 2023
Soft launch? Watch this space…
Want to read about somewhere that’s actually open, like, now? Check out our pick of London’s Best Recent Openings.