- The team behind London’s Kitty Fisher’s are to launch a new restaurant in Covent Garden next year. Cora Pearl will open in the former Bella Italia site on 30 Henrietta Street in spring 2018.
- The family behind Michelin-starred The Black Swan at Oldstead is looking to open a second, “more accessible” restaurant. Tommy Banks, the chef-owner of the family-run restaurant, which was recently named the best in the world by TripAdvisor, says he would like to open a second restaurant in a more urban location, and has set his sights on nearby York.
- Chef Scott Hallsworth has launched a crowdfunding campaign to take his Japanese concept Freak Scene from a pop-up to a permanent London site. The former Nobu head chef began the project in July after the sale of his Kurobuta restaurant group earlier this year.
- Soho House Group has confirmed it will reopen the iconic 150-year-old London restaurant Kettner’s in January 2018. The site, thought to have housed one of the oldest French restaurants in the capital, was bought by Pizza Express in 2002, but returned to a French brasserie in 2008 before it closed in 2016 after being acquired by Soho House.
-The all-day restaurant, bar and coffee group Daisy Green Collection has set a target of reaching 14 restaurants by 2020. The group, founded by Prue Freeman and her husband Tom Onions in 2012, currently operates eight restaurants and cafes in the capital and says it wants to open a further six in the next two years, including sites outside of London. The group has secured a new debt finance deal worth £3.4m through UK bank OakNorth.