Bancone is a pasta restaurant – just don’t call it Italian Life&Style A new restaurant below the imposing walls of the Bank of England is serving pasta – just don’t call this Italian food. I’m told the rare breed beef and marrowbone pasta is a British dish. Is a restaurant Italian because they serve pasta? As any City worker will know, Bancone’s silken threads are kneaded in the [...]
Hospitality leaders ramp up pressure on Labour to slash VAT Hospitality Leaders of top hospitality firms have ramped up pressure on Labour to slash VAT, which they warn is leading to hundreds of thousands of job losses. Pub chains JD Wetherspoon, Fuller’s and Greene King, as well as hotel giant Hilton and Mexican restaurant chain Wahaca, have thrown their weight behind a campaign to cut Value [...]
Office foodies, the working lunch needs YOU! Opinion Amid a hospitality crisis, it's up to workers to take longer, boozier lunches and power the economy, says Nicole Gordon.
Campanelle hopes to pick up Toast the City Best Restaurant win May 13, 2026 Campanelle is one of our favourite new Square Mile restaurants, a vast Italian dining room set inside the beautifully restored London Shipping Exchange on Billiter Street. Created by restaurateur Ninai Zarach, the all-day venue is an excellent showcase for grand City architecture. The menu takes inspiration from across Italy, catering for everything from breakfast meetings [...]
The City pub boasting taxidermy boar, deer and squirrel April 29, 2026 Our Toast the City Awards celebrating the best of the Square Mile returns later this year. Adam Bloodworth dines at City pub The Jugged Hare WHAT’S THE VIBE? At The Jugged Hare, I pass a boar growling at me. It has been upturned and beheaded and presented unceremoniously on a dining table. Fierce-eyed boars, slender [...]
How bakers became the rock stars of London’s post-booze era April 22, 2026 Bakers have developed the clout of mixologists, finds Adam Bloodworth Anna Higham finds it extremely stressful when a queue forms outside her Quince bakery in Islington. She feels that, by definition, a line means she can’t give her best service, but she acknowledges that for many of the capital’s bakery touring elite, the absence of [...]
Hows Trump’s war in Iran is hitting hospitality April 22, 2026 The hospitality sector has already been hammered by taxes, regulation and minimum wage hikes. Now Trump’s war in Iran is hitting everyone’s discretionary spending, says Sacha Lord I’ve written so much about how Hospitality, not just in London, but across the whole of the UK is suffering right now. I’ve been scathing towards the Chancellor, [...]
Jeremy King: My honest thoughts on The Ivy £1bn sale April 21, 2026 The Ivy and Simpson’s in the Strand restaurateur on holding his nerve, having no regrets and bringing fun back to London dining “People come in crying,” says Jeremy King from a white tableclothed banquette in his new British restaurant, Simpson’s in the Strand. “They have so many stories: my father brought me here, my godfather [...]
‘Devastating’ tube strikes: Pubs brace for 40 per cent sales hit April 20, 2026 London’s pubs and restaurants are bracing for a knock of as much as 40 per cent of daily sales from this week’s tube strikes as industry leaders warn of the “devastating” impact on hospitality. The capital’s hospitality industry is set to be the hardest-hit from the industrial action, which is due to begin at noon [...]
‘Relentless pressures’: More hospitality firms forced to shut even before Iran war April 17, 2026 The rate of corporate collapse in hospitality surged in February in signs the sector was struggling to stay afloat even before the Iran war brought further cost pressures. The number of accommodation and food service firms declaring insolvency jumped by 22 per cent to 270 in February, according to government data. This acceleration of the crisis [...]