London Food & Drink News: 27 September

Dean Nicholas
By Dean Nicholas Last edited 138 months ago
London Food & Drink News: 27 September


This Saturday is the last hurrah of the summer for Frank's Cafe, the Campari bar situated atop Peckham's multi-storey car park. There's a closing party that runs until 6am Sunday morning.

Sticking with SE15, Little Bird, a Peckham-produced gin, is hosting A Little Bird Told Me, a 1920s-themed pop-up beneath the arches at Bermondsey's fashionable Maltby Street on 5 October. Tickets are priced £30 which includes a cocktail on arrival and three courses prepared by sous chefs from Soho's NOPI.

On Saturday the Brunel Museum hosts the last Midnight Apothecary for a few weeks. Enjoy a selection of seasonal cocktails, including 'Autumn Leaves', 'Gothic Grog' and mulled cider. It's how the great Isambard Kingdom Brunel himself liked to unwind after a hard day's toiling.

Hawksmoor announced a soft launch for their new venue at Air Street, Piccadilly. The official opening isn't till 1 November, but between 22-31 October they're offering 50% off the entire bill.... if you can get a place, that is: previous soft launches have been wildly oversubscribed, and we saw reports on Twitter that the staff were dealing with a backlog of thousands of emails. If you fancy your chances, email them at airstreet@hawksmoor.com with your preferred time(s) and hope you get lucky.

Sliders. Burgers. Hot Dogs. More meat than you could shake a kebab skewer at. Oh, and cocktails. The Shoreditch Butchery, which opened this week at XOYO, is following a tried and true London trend. Bandwagon-jumping it may be, but if it tastes good, who's complaining?

One of the capital's other food fads — Peruvian cuisine — has a new outpost next week: Don Ceviche pops up at the Art Cellar in Holborn. Expect servings of ceviche (a soupy dish of raw fish native to the South American country) complemented with Peru's national tipple, pisco. If it's anything like The Last Days of Pisco it should be worth the visit.

A couple of festivals to take note of: the London Restaurant Festival begins on 1 October and runs for two weeks, while on a smaller scale, the Real Food Festival springs up on the South Bank Centre and along the river this weekend to banish the distasteful memories of all that fake grub we're forced to consume every day.

Finally, food blog Hot Dinners reveals the London restaurants that have been awarded their first Michelin star this year. The guide itself hasn't even been published yet, so whether this is a mistake by Michelin or a piece of mischievous guerilla marketing remains to be seen.

Photo / fabiolug

Last Updated 27 September 2012