Dean Street Townhouse
THE first offspring of the shotgun marriage between Caprice Holdings and Soho House should please Richard Caring whose ownership has brought the two companies together. The four storey Georgian premises that once were the Gargoyle Club - a one-time Soho hang-out for thirsty artists Francis Bacon, John Minton and Lucian Freud - that now houses a 39-bedroom hotel and a rather fetching new restaurant. Billed as an 'all-day dining room' - a very Soho House concept - the menu of seasonal British comfort food is pure Caprice Holdings. Likewise the look of the place - red leather and dark wood seating meeting monochromatic artwork hung on racing green patterned wallpaper and a black and white tiled floor - brings together the best of both marques by taking the kind of clubbable old school comfort that Caprice Holdings has made its name with and combining it with the sort of flattering lighting and sharp eye for design in which Soho House specialises. The breakfast menu covers everything from pastries, pots of yoghurt and granola to Manx kippers, bacon rolls and a full English.
The menu that cover the rest of the day brings familiar comfort from such things as oysters, chicken, bacon & leek pie, whole Dover sole, roast chicken with stuffing, mixed grill, pear Bakewell pudding and sherry trifle.
Supperclub
There have been rumours of the Supperclub's imminent arrival in London for years, long before the bar/restaurant/cabaret/club brand found its way to San Francisco, Singapore and Istanbul. The Amsterdam original opened back in 1991 and became famous for its risqué cabaret - I still can't banish the memory of a chap in a gimp suit serving champagne from a hose attached to an innovatively positioned rubber bladder - and for feeding prostrate punters in a glaringly all-white space on giant beds built around a DJ booth. Now it sells mix CDs and has its own cruise ship, Supperclub has finally opened in London in the cavernous Ladbroke Grove site under the Westway that what was once Subterania.
Anyone that's ever been to Sketch's Gallery will see that its 2001: A Space Odyssey-style aesthetics owe a substantial debt to the Supperclub. I'm guessing with that much white linen their laundry bill must be frightening. The idea is that everyone sits/ lies down to eat, and is served a four-course set menu, that changes every day and is broadly modern European in its scope. It's no insult to the Supperclub experience that it's not really about the food; with that in mind if you just want to pop in for a drink to soak up the scene it's open to drinkers from 11am and licensed until 2am.
Mennula
With a nutty Sicilian name that to the uneducated ear sounds worryingly like an intimate medical condition, Mennula has opened on the Charlotte Street site that was previously Gennaro Contaldo's Passione. Named after the Sicilian dialect for almond by its Sicilian-born chef-proprietor, Santino Busciglio, who along with his business partner hails from Cianciana in the Provence of Agrigento. The name only makes sense when you learn that their hometown holds a month-long annual almond festival.
Busciglio, previously the head chef at Number Twelve in Bloomsbury, has put together a menu that does modern Italian with a Sicilian accent. Typical dishes include sea bass ravioli with pumpkin, chilli and razor clams; belly of pork with polenta, savoy cabbage and apple chutney; and traditional Sicilian cannoli filled with sweet ewe's ricotta.
Meanwhile, the all-Italian wine list, put together by sommelier Antonio Cerilli, takes inspiration from all over Italy and - as is increasingly the fashion - features a pleasing number of selections by the carafe and glass.
Franco Manca
Pointy-headed pizza sorts have been raving incessantly about Franco Manca since it opened in Brixton market in March, 2008. They say it trumps Pizza East in terms of actual pizza - if not in terms of lessons in hip restaurant design in a Shoreditch warehouse.
For those that haven't yet had a chance to make it to south London to sample what they bill as their 'Organic Neapolitan Sourdough Pizza' and don't fancy what's admittedly at this time of year a bracing semi-al fresco dining experience under the covered market off Cold Harbour Lane, they've opened a proper restaurant with four walls and central heating in Chiswick.
They're keeping rather quiet about their west London arrival at the moment, so quiet in fact that at the moment there's no reference to it whatsoever on their website.
144 Chiswick High Road, London, W4 1PU, 020 8747 4822
Joe Warwick