Design Restaurants – NEWS DIGEST

There is so much going on as we come into 2014 that we’ve decided to do a round up for you. This may become a regular feature – as long as there is news we think you might want to hear about!

1. Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley to Close

Marcus Wareing is shutting his two Michelin starred restaurant at The Berkeley Hotel in London’s West End for more than two months for renovation work. The restaurant will close from this Saturday 18th January and will re-open on 24th March under the name ‘Marcus’. Wareing has said “I believe there has been a gradual, but genuine evolution in what the customer is looking for in today’s fine-dining offering and we are now moving away from the more formal styles of service”. The new space is expected to be more engaging and inviting, offering a more ‘experiential’ dining occasion. We can’t wait! Members wishing to use their card to dine while Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley is closed can use the following restaurants which are less than 5 minutes drive:

One-o-One – The Park Tower, Knightsbridge – members receive 25% off total food bill apart from Friday or Saturday dinner

The Lecture Room and Library – Sketch, Mayfair – complimentary member dining lunch Tuesday to Thursday

The Gallery – Sketch, Mayfair – complimentary member dining dinner Monday to Wednesday

Tamarind, Mayfair – complimentary member dining lunch Sunday to Friday

2. Create Your Own Tasting Menu 

Small fine-dining venues are continuing to dominate the trade press and London looks set to champion this trend with the opening of a new ‘create your own tasting menu’ 20 cover restaurant in Knightsbridge next week. Swiss chef Michael Riemenschneider, previously at The Abbey in Penzance and also time spent with Heston Blumenthal has decided to ‘take the tasting menu off of its pedestal and make it more accessible and fun’ and will open CANVAS on Marylebone Lane tomorrow (14 January). Now we think its true to say that it’s often the case with a set tasting menu that there is one course which you wouldn’t necessarily have chosen had you been given free choice (but you usually attempt anyway). The idea of constructing your own menu hits a good chord with us – guest can choose between three to nine courses for lunch or an incredible Titanic-sinking fifteen courses for dinner. Dishes include pigeon with chocolate, beetroot and ‘the golden egg’; scallop with cauliflower ‘a little different’, caramel and juniper and desserts include favourites but with a contemporary edge. The restaurant will also offer wine flights – ‘classic’ and ‘iconic’, tailored for every tasting menu. http://www.canvasmr.com/

3. Bob Bob Ricard Owner to open new £15m Restaurant

Russian restaurateur Leonid Shutov is to open a site in central London with will offer a vintage Champagne bar and no less than 100 vintages of legendary Sauternes Yquem. Dating back to 1887, ten of the vintages will be a available by the glass. The restaurant could not be more different in proportion to the one we spoke of above, boasting 250 seats, making it one of the largest in the West End. Shutov’s plan is to call the venture Biblioteka which means library in Russian and he intends to display the restaurant’s impressive wine collection along the walls like books. “There will be Michelin-star ambition”, said Shutov, “not neccessarily in the complexity of food; there is a great beauty in simplicity, but in the precise execution and honed presentation. It will be on the grand imperial scale that visitors to London have in their head when they come.” Housed in a former Lloyds Bank flagship branch the restaurant is due to open in 2015.

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