Monday Bulletin: Fernando Trocca’s latest pop-up and Artfarm’s new seafood restaurant

Catch up on the latest industry news stories of the week from the CODE Bulletin

Mostrador

The Argentinian chef and restaurateur Fernando Trocca will bring his ‘family dining concept’ Mostrador to London later this month. The 100-cover space, once a Victorian cabinetmaker’s on Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch, will pop-up for six months, specialising in ‘all-day dining, seasonal produce, and freshly baked pastries’. Trocca first opened a branch of Mostrador in Uruguay ten years ago and has gone on to launch in Montauk, New York, and Buenos Aires in his native Argentina. The kitchen team will be led by Jack Godik, previously head chef at Jason Atherton’s The Little Social, and 80 per cent of dishes will be vegetarian. Trocca, who made his name in the fine dining world, said the inspiration behind his casual concept comes from the ‘mostradores’ – or counter-service places – which feature across Latin America. He said: ‘We work with seasonal fruits and vegetables prepared in an original way. Mostrador, for me, is the revolution of simplicity’. Open from 26 October.

Dinner fit for a king

For many years, Bellamy’s was the restaurant of choice for Queen Elizabeth II. It sounds like King Charles III has chosen his restaurant to visit just on the other side of Berkeley Square. His Majesty and the Queen Consort dined at the Mount St. Restaurant on Wednesday evening.

Artfarm news

Exclusive: The hospitality group Artfarm has another new restaurant on the way: a seafood offering in Ballater, not far from its famous Fife Arms hotel in Braemer, near Balmoral. Artfarm CEO Ewan Venters said the restaurant will make the most of Aberdeenshire’s seafood and will be another dining destination for guests of the hotel, other tourists and locals. There will also be a shop and fishmongers. The venue will be in the former Rothesay Rooms, a 19th century building that housed a separate restaurant and shop until May this year, when the business relocated to a larger space nearby.

Small plates

• Gourmet doughnut purveyors Longboys, opened by the acclaimed pastry chefs Graham Hornigold and Heather Kaniukwill in 2019, will launch a flagship site in King’s Cross on 28 October 2022.
   
• The OWO, Raffles’ enormous development in The Old War Office in Whitehall, has announced another restaurant in its nine-strong line-up. Paper Moon, a Milanese concept, was established by Pio Galligani and his wife Enrica Del Rosso in Milan in 1977.
   
• DORIAN, Notting Hill’s ‘newest clandestine dinner destination’, will officially open its doors on 18 October. Word is the food is excellent. 
   
• Supa Ya Ramen will open a second site, in Peckham, on 26 October. The new restaurant will serve classic bowls from the repertoire as well as new dishes and an elevated cocktail menu.
   
• A new restaurant focusing on the food of southern Italy, Puglia most notably, will open in Borough Market on 3 November. It will be called Pulia. 

OpenTable 

Many in the industry will be aware that scammers are targeting pubs and restaurants – and their guests – by posing as the bookings service OpenTable. Thieves are reportedly calling restaurants claiming to be from the website and to have identified a problem with reservations, asking for basic information to gain access to customer accounts, then contacting guests and taking deposits/gaining credit card details in turn. A spokeswoman for OpenTable told CODE: ‘Third-party phishing and social engineering scams have been on the rise across the hospitality industry, which is deeply concerning to us and to our restaurant partners. Data protection is of the utmost importance to us, as well as to the restaurants we work with. We are actively alerting diners and restaurants to this kind of criminal conduct and how they can recognise suspicious activity.’ She directed us here, a generic support section of the website.

hicce hart

The chef Pip Lacey and her business partner Gordy McIntyre will open the hicce hart, a neighbourhood pub in Islington, this November. The food, from head chef Charlotte Harris, will be ‘classic pub grub’ alongside some more inventive ‘crowd-pleasing’ dishes, and the team will work closely with the independent brewer The Goodness Brewery. Pip said: ‘I’m so excited for us to open our second place. And, to do it with existing ambitious members of the hicce family, is the dream come true. I can’t wait for them to flourish and see the hicce hart become the heart and soul of the local community.’ Gordy added: ‘The pub is one of the few real levellers in life: it showcases the beauty of multicultural London at its finest. To have the privilege to become custodians of such a historical site is a real honour.’

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