Fed up of dining at the same old places? Want to know what's on trend? Read on for some of the best restaurants that have opened in the last couple of months.
Savure, Old Street
They make good pasta at Savure. They’ve been doing that at their Pastificio con Cucina premises in Turin for a while, and now they’re doing it for a steady flow of customers at their Shoreditch venue. It’s a restaurant-shop, with fresh, uncooked pasta you can take home to DIY. The restaurant side of the business does a build your own pasta dish menu. Try one of the durum wheat pastas with the wild boar and tomato sauce.
Savure, 20 Paul Street, EC2A 4JH
404
Bababoom, Battersea
There’s a lot to like about this charcoal kebab kitchen that's bringing a short menu of beautiful flatbreads — rotisserie lamb shoulder with pomegranate onions, and short-rib beef adana with dates and pistachios — to Battersea Rise. We love how carefully sourced the food is, with high welfare meat, and all of the eggs free range. Head there for breakfast at the weekend — spicy lamb sausage, bacon, fried eggs and harissa paste wrapped up in freshly baked flatbread.
Bababoom, 30 Battersea Rise, SW11 1EE
404
Zia Lucia, Highbury East
Zia Lucia opened in June, and managed to draw a passionate following very quickly. People get a bit fervent about the black pizza base, dark with vegetable charcoal, but if you want your pizza to look less forbidding, standard wheat or gluten free versions are available.
Zia Lucia, 157 Holloway Road, N7 8LX
404
Sagardi, Shoreditch
The Basque food boom in London shows no signs of slowing down, and latest proof is this Curtain Road restaurant. It’s the first London outpost for Grupo Sagardi, which already has footholds in Barcelona and Buenos Aires (and more than twenty locations in between). So it’s no surprise they’re such smooth operators by now, as their way with a charcoal-grilled Txuleton steak and a cold beer should prove.
Sagardi, 95 Curtain Road, EC2A 3BS
404
Morito, Hackney
Not technically a new restaurant, but a new branch of the Exmouth Market tapas bar on Hackney Road. Like the EC1 version, the new branch is sort of Spanish, sort of north-African, and definitely brilliant. The menu changes daily — if the lamb chops with paprika and cumin are on offer when you're there, make them your first port of call. Maybe your second and third ports of call as well.
Morito, 195 Hackney Road, E2 8JL
404
Berber & Q Shawarma Bar, Clerkenwell
This one is from the people behind Berber & Q, a place 0f North African meat and pounding dance music in Haggerston. If they can char, sumac and chilli-crust a cauliflower into being one of the best dishes on a great menu, imagine what they can do with something that's already exciting.
That something is spit-roasted, marinaded meat. This new bar is already incredibly busy, for obvious reasons (grilled meat and lots of it), but there are sumac-spiced cocktails and cold beers to keep you busy if you have to wait for your shawarma.
Berber & Q Shawarma Bar, Exmouth Market, EC1R 4QE
404
Mason & Company, Hackney
Both halves of this mash-up are great on their own: the craft beers from Five Points Brewery, and the meatball subs and Italian-NY street food from Capish. So the arrival of their joint venture is the stuff Hackney Wick dreams are made of. It's well worth a visit for the steaks, meatballs and pale ales, no matter what part of London you're coming from.
Mason & Company, 25 East Bay Lane, Here East, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Hackney Wick, E20 3BS
404
Sardine, Old Street
Stevie Parle’s been making a habit of opening small, perfectly-formed restaurants balanced somewhere between informal and special – Dalston’s Rotorino and Craft London in Greenwich most recently. Now his protégé Alex Jackson is aiming for the same — with Parle on consult — in his new restaurant off Old Street.
A southern French slant shines through in pork chops with roasted mushrooms and root vegetables, baked fish, and a lot of things cooked over a wood-fire. It's worth booking here, as it’s not enormous and gets fairly busy with people wanting to find out if Jackson’s got the same knack for right place, right time, great menu as his mentor. The early consensus is, yeah.
Sardine, 15 Micawber Street, N1 7TB
404
Curio + TĀ TĀ, Haggerston
In about the time it takes to say 'Chinese streetfood pop-up', TĀ TĀ has gone from weekend markets and a Newman Arms residency to a permanent home at a coffee shop in Haggerston. It's a tiny room with outside space to spread into on summer evenings. The food's served as big, family-style dishes to share and almost every menu item hinges on rice — which is made more exciting than it sounds.
Curio + Tata, Curio Cabal, 258 Kingsland Road, E8 4DG
404
400 Rabbits, Nunhead
The second branch of 400 Rabbits follows in the footsteps of the original Crystal Palace pizzeria. Expect a simple, un-flashy menu of wood-fired pizzas. Toppings include rare breed meats from Cannon & Cannon. Craft ales on the beer list include offerings from Siren and Fourpure.
400 Rabbits, 143 Evelina Road, SE15 3HB
404
