Spring is almost upon us. That means many exciting things: lighter mornings and evenings, a delicious crop of fresh spring vegetables (hello asparagus, we’ve missed you) and most importantly, a host of new restaurant openings. Here’s our pick of the bunch.
Buvette
James Beard Award-winning chef Jody Williams will relaunch her cult New York all-day restaurant Buvette in London's Covent Garden this spring (a first London Buvette, in Notting Hill, closed in 2024). Expect a replica of the West Village original, with coffee and cocktails, and French-inspired breakfasts, brunches, lunches and dinners as the New York-ification of London's restaurant scene continues apace.
Photo courtesy Buvette
Celentano’s
Less a brand new opening, more a relocation, Celentano’s will be embarking on a second life at the Arthouse Glasgow hotel in April, after leaving Cathedral House in the city’s East End at the close of 2025. Anna and Dean Parker’s Italian-influenced restaurant remains low-waste focused, with dishes such as seasonally changing vegetable agnolotti and malted barley affogato, and drinks created from housemade spirits and waste from the kitchen. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Photo by Naomi Vance
Langosteria
Langosteria, the seafood-focused restaurant group, which started in Milan and now has six restaurants across Italy, Switzerland and France, will finally be opening a much delayed London outpost this spring, at Raffles London at The OWO in Whitehall. This is a fine-dining experience with Italian roots, so there is, of course, a pasta section on the menu, with dishes like paccheri with seabass, while main courses, or should we say secondi, include an interesting-sounding black grouper Chateaubriand. Desserts include a non-more Italian tiramisu.
Oudh 1722
Chef Aktar Islam of Birmingham's two-Michelin-star Opheem will be opening in London for the first time this spring. Oudh 1722, set across three floors of a listed Victorian building in Borough, will focus on Awadhi, a royal cuisine from Lucknow in northern India. Expect silken kebabs, biryanis and delicious curries, with plenty of slow-cooking to maximise flavour. This is Londoners’ chance to try the cuisine of one of the UK’s best chefs without leaving the capital.
Photo by Harriet Langford
Portfolio
Manchester’s Portfolio, ‘the UK’s first dedicated Champagne boutique’, opened in December, but May will see the launch of its full restaurant experience, led by chef Julien Pizer, previously of the city’s Another Hand. The 18-course tasting menu, we’re told, is “centred around the best part of any tasting menu – the snacks – taking the best single mouthful from a full plate of food in each course.” Something like Massimo Bottura’s The Crunchy Part of the Lasagna without the three-star baggage? The team will be revealing more in the coming weeks. Regardless, we wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment – snacks are the best part of a tasting menu.
The Latimer
This fresh pub makeover on West London’s Latimer Road, set to open on 21 April, is a family affair, that family being the incredibly well connected Spiteris – father Jon has been a partner in St John among others, mum Melanie Arnold is co-founder of Rochelle Canteen, while sons Lorcan and Fin were most recently of Caravel and daughter Molly is involved with Koya. Lorcan will be leading the kitchen, with dishes such as black pudding confit potato, brown crab tagliolini, and ox tail with mash and horseradish. Yet another addition to London’s enviable stable of gastropubs.
Teal
Many were overjoyed, though not surprised, when Sally Abé announced that she’d be opening her own restaurant in East London, now confirmed for 26 March. Abé is a chef with a serious CV that includes The Ledbury, The Harwood Arms, and, more recently, The Pem and The Bull Charlbury. Abé is promising a “little British bistro in Hackney”, but we’re sure dishes like crab royale and venison faggots will have plenty of pazazz. Intriguing plays on British nostalgia include a ‘penny lick’ on the dessert menu.
Photo by Jodi Hinds
Whiteley’s Kitchen, Bar & Café
The only venue on this list that’s already open (since 1 March) is potentially one of its most ambitious, with several dining spaces, a fermentation lab and an in-house bakery program. Part of the new luxury Six Senses hotel, which has taken over a section of the former Whiteley's department store in London’s Bayswater, the restaurant will serve a vegetable forward, “maverick British” menu with dishes like gnocchi with cavolo nero, Stilton and toasted English walnuts, and salt-baked English pear with rooibos-infused crème légère and crumble.
