Back in 2021, Carousel – the restaurant famous for perpetually reinventing itself with a new guest residency in the kitchen every few weeks – reinvented its entire existence…
…by moving.
Saying goodbye to their trusty old digs in Marylebone and hello to Charlotte Street in Fitzrovia, Carousel co-founders Ollie & Ed Templeton chose a bigger, buzzier location for Carousel’s new HQ – one that takes up a whopping three townhouses worth of space. And nestled inside it is their first ever wine bar, featuring a menu of seasonal snacks and small plates from chef Ollie accompanying a thoughtfully chosen list of lively, low-intervention wines and cocktails.
Joe Okpako
The wine bar’s the first thing that you’ll see as you approach the venue, with giant floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto the street and spill light onto the colourful terrazzo stone floor, the wooden furnishings and the long polished concrete bar. Ollie’s menu here is a sort of ‘best-of’ Carousel: he’s recreated dishes from the hundreds of different food cultures, inspiring chefs and creative collaborations that he’s seen come and go over the years and somehow – like a really difficult jigsaw – made them all fit together. So you can get everything from a maitake tempura with mushroom broth (inspired by Ollie’s time in the kitchen with Yuji Tani of HOUSE in Tokyo & Brooklyn) as well as grilled mackerel flatbread dish, which draws on a revelatory sandwich he discovered at a Berlin flea market.
Heading deeper inside you’ll find the residency space (directly behind the wine bar) where Carousel’s pick of cutting-edge international culinary talent come to juggle the pans for a week or two at a time. You can see who’s next up here, but upcoming highlights include Stockholm’s ‘iconoclastic’ Punk Royale from 30th April – 4th May (whose last residency required guests to lock their phones away, before eating caviar off the back of their hands with a vodka chaser) and Bali’s hottest zero-waste eatery, FED by Made, on 13th-18th May.
Special mention, however, goes to NYC’s Pecking House, which is popping up here at Carousel from 21st May – 1st June. Chef Eric Huang’s Taiwanese-spiced fried chicken promises to give you a dose of paraesthesiac hysteria – that’s the ‘Beatlemania-like’ cultural obsession for the lip-tingling effects of chillies – with wild toppings and sides like duck heart gravy mash and truffle wonton & bone broth. He has a waiting list of over 10,000 for his Brooklyn eatery – but you can book your spot at Carousel right here.
And the fun still doesn’t end there, because upstairs there’s a private dining room and an event & workshop space for up to 150 guests (frequently playing host to offbeat activities like Wild Life Drawing). And right next door to Carousel’s main venue is a smaller incubator-style space designed for hosting more casual, longer-term pop-ups, called No. 23 (currently home to Chuck’s smashed burgers from Milan).
The residents there are always #1.
NOTE: Carousel’s wine bar is open Tues-Sat 12-11.30pm for both walk-ins and bookings, with guest chef dinners Tues-Sat at 7pm (which you need to pre-book for). You can see who’s on the pans, and book tickets, HERE.
Carousel | 19-23 Charlotte Street, Fitzrovia, W1T 1RL
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