Monday Bulletin: Bar Shrimp & Ragù

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

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Bar Shrimp

Great news from the team behind Higher Ground, Flawd, and Cinderwood Market Garden in Manchester. They have a third venue on the way, Bar Shrimp, opening next door to Higher Ground in winter 2025. Founders Daniel Craig Martin, Joseph Otway, and Richard Cossins announced the news on Cerys Matthews’ BBC Radio 6 Music show at the weekend – an unusual choice for breaking restaurant news, but fully in keeping with the trio’s vision for Bar Shrimp as a bar “where drinks, seafood and sound are seamlessly connected”. Hospitality director Cossins told Matthews: “We’re kind of just evolving further and further into what we enjoy and what we are seeing people respond to.” The finer details are yet to be revealed but Bar Shrimp’s focus will be on cocktails, beers on tap, and British seafood, in an environment as suited to post-work beers, as dinner or late night cocktails.

Ragù

Karen and Mark Chapman of Cor in Bristol, one of CODE Hospitality’s Happiest Places To Work 2024, open their second restaurant in the city this week. Their new Italian sharing plates restaurant Ragù opens officially in Wapping Wharf on Saturday 5 April (soft launch, 3-4 April). Ragù’s senior team has been working together since Cor launched in 2022. Cor head chef Vyck Colsell takes on the executive chef role, focusing on “quality ingredients, prepared simply, with love”; while restaurant manager Tallulah Small moves to operations manager. The launch menu promises fresh, modern Italian cooking: focaccia and whipped bottarga butter; whole red mullet, moro orange, fennel and black olive; fennel salsiccaia, fregola Sarda, and gremolata.

Small Plates

• Dominic Hamdy’s Ham Restaurants (Crispin, Bistro Freddie etc) go from four to five this June with the addition of Canal, a new all-day spot at the Mason & Fifth hotel in Westbourne Grove. They have their chef: Adrian Hernandez Farina, ex Humo Mayfair.
   
• William Gleave, fresh from his residency at Hill & Szrok in Hackney, has moved to Margate. He joins Sargasso, Ed Wilson and Josie Stead’s seaside sequel to Brawn, as chef patron.
   
• The first phase of Chantelle Nicholson’s Cordia Collective at Borde Hill Garden in West Sussex launches today, with the opening of summerhouse café Gloriette and coffee shop Gingko. Former Toklas baker Janine Edwards is behind the cinnamon and magnolia butter curlicues.
  
  
• Burger & Beyond is taking its bacon butter burgers and truffle tots to Manchester for its first location outside the capital. Burger & Beyond will be one of five food brands opening at new food hall House of Social in the summer.
  
  
• Angela Hartnett opens her fourth Cafe Murano this summer. The Marylebone site will join her existing stable of Italian restaurants in St James’s, Bermondsey, and Covent Garden.
  
  
• Roti King is expanding beyond London for the first time with the opening of a restaurant in The Lanes, Brighton in May. It will be Malaysian chef Sugen Gopal’s fifth roti canai restaurant.
  
  
• Adam Handling has opened a luxury chocolate boutique in Covent Garden. The Adam Handling Chocolate Shop, two minutes from Handling’s flagship Frog, is a cacao cornucopia selling everything from florentines to 12 varieties of hot chocolate.
  
  
• Bar Douro City in London has announced the line-up for its guest chefs series. A showcase for modern Portuguese cooking, the series starts with vegetarian by Fava Tonka on 8 April, followed by new taberna cooking by O Velho Eurico on May 20; and nose-to-tail by Pig Meu on 17 June.