Fitzrovia

• Test of time - celebrating Roka's 20th anniversary with sushi and yaki on Charlotte Street

  

  Popular sushi and robata restaurant Roka is celebrating its 20th birthday this year. We made a return visit to the OG Roka on Charlotte Street to see why it's lasted so long. 

• Test Driving All'onda - a restaurant rizzing up risotto for Londoners

  

  Lovers of risotto need to make their way to Fitzrovia where All'onda is serving it up with a fine dining twist. 

• Monica Galetti's Mere to close

  

  It's been a year of pretty high-profile restaurant closures, particularly in the famous chef/high-end side of things. We've already had the closure of Marcus Wareing's Marcus and Michel

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• All’onda in Fitzrovia is all about risotto

  

  A new restaurant called All’onda is coming to Fitzrovia and it's all centred around risotto. 

  Founded by Cordula Schulz, whose apparent passion for risotto drives the restaurant, she's brought in Andrea Granzarolo as head chef. He brings with him a wealth of experience, having been at Helene Darroze for six years, as well as The Square and The Greenhouse. 

  The menu, of course,

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• Out and In restaurant will have London's first faux-fresco space

  

  Update: You guessed it, this was our 2024 April Fool. To see all the April Fool stories we've ever run, click here.

  Now that spring is officially here and the clocks have gone forward, the next thing that happens here at Hot Dinners HQ is the arrival of a deluge of press releases announcing the opening of terraces and

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• Charlotte Street is getting an Alsatian wine bar and restaurant called July

  

  Updated with the opening date

  Opening in the spring but confusingly named after a summer month, July is going to be an Alsatian-inspired restaurant and wine bar hitting up Charlotte Street. And while this is the first hospitality venture for the pair behind it, they've brought in a team that shows they know what they're doing.

  French-Swiss food writer Solynka Dumas and Julian Oschmann are the

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• Carmel is expanding from Queen's Park to Oxford Circus

  

  12/3/24 - updated with the opening date

  The team behind Carmel, Berber & Q and Shawarma Bar are heading into the West End to open a second Carmel restaurant just off Oxford Circus. They've taken over the site on Market Place that was previously La Rampa (and before that a string of other restaurants, so here's hoping this venture breaks the curse).

  As with their Queen's Park restaurant, Carmel's

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• The best restaurants in Fitzrovia

  

  North of Oxford Street, there are a lot of great restaurants in Fitzrovia - and it's not all confined to Charlotte Street. Here's our pick of the best.

• Mortimer House Kitchen goes Italian under Nessa chef Tom Cenci

  

  After success launching Nessa in Soho, chef Tom Cenci is also taking on another restaurant by the same group, Mortimer House Kitchen. It'll be different to Soho's British menu though, with Mortimer House being a strictly Italian affair. 

  The menu is apparently influenced by Cenci's family summers on the Amalfi coast and includes:

  • Zucchini caesar with parmesan and
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• From Spain via the Ukraine, Boca a Boca will serve up tapas on Charlotte Street

  

  War may be ravaging their country, but Ukrainians are still getting up every day and going to work and that includes opening new restaurants. And one that opened its doors in Kyiv last year is getting ready to expand to London. Boca a Boca was set up by Ukrainian entrepreneur, Andrii Nikonov, who wanted to open somewhere in Kyiv to share his love of Spanish food.

  Now he's bringing Boca a Boca to London where

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