Four independents this week, and three of them are firsts. A head chef leaving a famous kitchen to open under her own name, a deli owner doubling up in Hampstead, a Portuguese founder coming back to the street he started on, and a crumpet brand finally getting a shop. The big group openings are covered everywhere else, so we have left them out.
PAM, Farringdon
61 Charterhouse Street, EC1M 6HA. Open now after a soft launch, with the full opening on Tuesday 3 November.
Karla Knowles spent almost eight years as head chef at Kiln, and PAM is the first place with her name over the door. It is a 45-seat live-fire room on the old Cubana site by Smithfield, backed by Edouard and Romain Bourrillon of Cocotte and Casa Felicia. The food is northern Thai pushed about with British produce and European technique: miang kham leaf wraps, a khao soi noi rice-flour pancake, roast duck in red curry with chips. Quarterly art shows and guest chefs are planned, and a second, calmer restaurant called Aree follows in Notting Hill in the spring. Knowles calls PAM the naughty sibling. Instagram: @pam.restaurant.
Oren Delicatessen, Hampstead
12 Heath Street, NW3 6TE. Open now (opened Sunday 1 November).
Oded Oren runs Oren on Shacklewell Lane, a Bib Gourmand neighbourhood restaurant, and a deli on Broadway Market. This is deli number two. The model is a New York deli with North African and Mediterranean flavours: babka, challah buns with New York-style fillings, hummus, borekitas, latkes, pickles and a counter of pantry staples, with every loaf and bake made by the Broadway Market team and brought up each morning. At weekends there is a sharing menu they call The Slow Range, with beef short rib and Persian lime among it. It doubles as a bottle shop for low-intervention wine, with seating in the courtyard it looks onto. Hampstead has waited a long time for something like this. orendeli.com.
Bar Douro, Soho
10 Greek Street, W1D 4DH. Opens Wednesday 4 November.
Max Graham ran a Churchill’s Port House pop-up on Greek Street before opening the first Bar Douro under the arches at London Bridge in 2016. Ten years on he is back on the same Soho street with site three. Counter seats round an open kitchen, an azulejo-tiled dining room with tiles hand-painted by a family atelier outside Lisbon, and a cellar room for tastings and producer dinners. The headline is Maronesa vaca velha, beef from mature cows of a mountain breed in Trás-os-Montes, and Bar Douro is the first restaurant in the UK to import it. Around it, croquetes de alheira, bacalhau à brás, piri-piri chicken from executive chef Neuza Leal’s family recipe, and a list of Portuguese wines and ports from small producers. bardouro.co.uk.
“Soho is where the dream started.” Max Graham, Bar Douro
Jones’ Crumpet Café, Notting Hill
44 Golborne Road, W10 5PR. Opens mid-November.
Ian Endfield started Jones’ Crumpets in 2017 with a supper club in his flat where every course had a crumpet in it. Since then the crumpets have gone into Rovi, La Fromagerie, Fortnum’s tea salon and a mail-order box, without a shop of their own. Golborne Road fixes that. A short sit-down menu of a breakfast, two savoury plates and a sweet one, each built on one of four crumpets: classic, double cheese, cheese and chive, or dark chocolate with a molten 71 per cent centre. A grab-and-go counter with toppings made on site, and Allpress coffee. Quarry tiles, birch joinery and a stainless-steel counter you can watch the crumpets cook behind. Instagram: @jonescrumpets.
Opening something yourself?
For the independent venues we feature, we do a free launch month: press list built and pitched, opening-week social plan, Google profile set up properly. Then you decide whether to keep us on. Read about our hospitality marketing or write to hello@good-folks.co.uk.
