Restaurateur Soren Jessen, who launched successful City restaurant 1 Lombard Street, will open the new Nordic site in April 2018.
The ground-floor 60-cover restaurant will be informal, serving a selection of typical Scandinavian dishes including snaps-cured dill salmon, pickled radishes, onion and beetroot; marinated herring with caramelised apple; potato salad with smoked mayo, fried onion and toasted rye crumbs; and venison with preserved plums, apple pistachio and almonds. Dessert options will be a Danish apple cake with cinnamon ice cream and a Norwegian hazelnut cake with chocolate sauce.
Traditional Smørrebrød (open-faced sandwiches on rye bread) will also be on offer, with a variety of fillings such as smoked trout; curried herring; Greenland shrimp; goat’s cheese with beetroot; and roast beef with burnt onion and horseradish.
Typical Nordic breakfast options will comprise Danish pastries; charcuterie, gravadlax and eggs.
The restaurant, designed by Danish design studio JLKDS, will feature an open kitchen and food bar, as well as a 20-cover outdoor seating area
“Our offering at Ekte will be very different from 1 Lombard Street,” explains Jessen.
“We want to explore fresh and seasonal Nordic-inspired cooking, and also create a vital take away offering for busy City locals.”
The restaurant joins a line-up of nine confirmed restaurants including a project from Andrew Wong, JKS Restaurants' Brigadiers, Koya Bar, Caravan City, Vinoteca, Homeslice, Bleecker and Ahi Poke.
The final operator opening at the development is yet to be announced, but both legendary chef Pierre Koffmann and Sourced Market have been linked to the scheme.