A swanky new Champagne bar, game-changing charcuterie and Asian Sunday roasts capture this month’s best London restaurant offerings.
Augustine Kitchen
This October, French restaurant Augustine Kitchen in Battersea launches a dedicated Champagne bar, serving Champagnes by the glass and bottle alongside a decadent menu of foie gras, smoked salmon, caviar, charcuterie and French cheeses. The Champagne list, which caters to a range of price points, includes houses such as Louis Roederer, Bollinger, Gosset, Laurent Perrier and Dom Pérignon, as well as lesser-known cuvées such as Barbier Louvet 1er Cru, produced by a seventh-generation, family-owned producer, and Monopole Heidsieck, a favourite of Russian Tsar Nicholas II. Chef Franck Raymond continues to run the main restaurant, with its menu focusing on the Savoie region of France; escargots with garlic cream and parsley butter; lobster bisque; rack of lamb with gratin Savoyard; pistachio crème brûlée. A new wine cellar also boasts some unique bottles, including more than 25 wines from Savoie, the Alpine wines having been produced in the mountain air.
Manteca
Good news for charcuterie fans. Manteca, the pop-up from Chris Leach and David Carter, gets a new permanent home in Shoreditch this month, following a series of residencies across London. Focusing on nose to tail cooking, hand rolled pastas and fire-cooked sharing cuts, a glass-panelled hanging room will show off the team’s in-house butchery. Diners can expect immense charcuterie offerings including sticks of coppiette, a Roman-style pork jerky, cured with Campari and fennel seeds, alongside dishes like nduja steamed mussels, pickled chilli and duck sausage, and pig skin ragu. Non-meat dishes such as brown crab cacio e pepe and seaweed tagliatelle with smoked seaweed butter will also be on offer. Don’t miss the Sicilian Old Fashioned, made with Averna, rye whisky, triple sec and orange syrup.
Mr Ji
The Soho-based Asian restaurant, which opened earlier this year, will launch Asian-inspired Sunday roasts on the first Sunday of every month from 3 Oct. Taking influence from Cantonese-style roasted meats, guests can dive into a feasting menu of four different meats: Glossy roast duck with an umami dip, crispy roast pork belly with sweet mustard, Taiwanese sausage with garlic mayo and a signature soy poached chicken with ginger and spring onion dipping sauce. All served with unlimited jasmine rice with a hint of salted duck egg. The Sunday roasts are priced at £67.50 for two people, including a welcome drink each. During the week, guests can tuck into fried panko-crusted chicken hearts with sweet curry sauce and a Sichuan Burger, made with a pineapple bun, fried chicken thigh and cucumber salad.
Booking Office 1869
This reimagined bar and restaurant inside the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel in King’s Cross re-launches in October, following a major redesign by Parisian architect and designer Hugo Toro. A new take on the original, 19th century train station ticket hall includes a Victorian Winter Garden, chock full of eclectic patterns and fabrics and 8-metre tall palm trees. Dishes including slow roasted lamb shoulder in chermoula spices and monkfish and potato curry with spinach, spring onion and lime, will be overseen by Patrick Powell, formerly of Chiltern Firehouse. Sweet offerings include Blackberry Trifle and a ridiculously tempting brioche donut with caramelised apple and burnt cinnamon cream. A live Raw Bar will also serve market oysters and sashimi-style skewers. Premium cocktails, Champagnes, wines and spirits will rule the drinks list, alongside a tea-inspired non-alcoholic range.
The London Gin Club
This Soho institution officially reopens on 6 October, having been given a new lease of life by London’s renowned Inception Group (Mr Fogg’s, Cahoots, Bunga Bunga). The impressive back bar will feature more than 100 of the world’s finest gins – from well-known to small batch. A 10 strong gin cocktail menu, as well as gin tasting flights will also be on offer to thirsty punters. The favourite drinking den first launched in 2012 but was forced to close due to damage caused by Crossrail during the construction of the adjacent Tottenham Court Road Station in April 2019. It is hoped the refurb will recapture some of the old magic of the former hotspot.
