Monday Bulletin: Ruben’s Reubens at Darby’s and Angelina no.2

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

Ruben at Darby’s

South London sandwich slinger Ruben’s Reubens has launched next door at Darby’s in Nine Elms. By day, from 8am, a bakery, with pastries, sourdough bagels, coffees and juices, as well as a daily pasta dish, a soup of the day, cheeses and charcuterie. Come evening, a collaborative bar menu alongside Darby’s founder Robin Gill. Ruben — from CODE’s 30 under 30 class of 22/23 — arrives off the back of a research trip to New York and so on the bar snacks menu will be pickles, soy devilled eggs, house-smoked sausages and burnt ends, chicken wings and beef spare ribs. Oysters, too, and a house burger. It goes further thanks to the arrival of Irish master sommelier Gearoid Devaney of Flint Wines. He’s working with Darby’s own Don Tindall on an ‘ambitious’ new wine list. These alongside ‘candlelit bar vibes’: expect barrel aged negronis, lots of bourbon and Irish whiskey, picklebacks and Darby’s daiquiris.

Angelina no.2

The team behind Anglelina Dalston is to open a pasta and grill restaurant in Shoreditch next year. Osteria Angelina will continue in the Italian-Japanese ethos: fresh pastas will come with a Japanese twist, while ‘big cut’ Binchotan grill dishes will arrive alongside bollito misto, served tableside. There will also be more than 300 Italian wines and sakes curated by Masayo Nuttall. Chefs will work in an open kitchen and a pastaio will be in situ in a glass-walled section of the 75-cover dining room. Founders Joshua Owens-Baigler, Amar Takhar and Laura Horta, who launched Angelina in 2019, said: ‘We’re thrilled to expand into a larger venue… providing an incredible platform to introduce the Angelina brand and Itameshi cuisine to a wider audience’.

Small Plates

• One of London’s finest taquerias, La Chingada — up there with Sonora — has opened a third site. Following the breakout success of the Surrey Quays original and the second, larger restaurant in Euston, the Mexican brand has opened in Bermondsey on Jamaica Road.
   
• Elsewhere on the Mexican scene, Santiago Lastra and the Fonda team have now opened the downstairs dining room and bar, Sala Rosa, a smaller, more intimate space. It ‘embodies the vibrant, after-hours energy of Mexico’s beloved restaurants and bars’, said the group. It can be hired out privately, too, with room for 40.
   
• Harrods has defended a new £1 cover charge in all its restaurants and cafes which comes in addition to an existing 12.5 per cent service charge. The £1 cover charge reportedly goes to the business. 
   
• Officina 00 is opening a new restaurant in Covent Garden. As well as its normal pastas — there’ll be a pasta workshop at the Dryden Street site — Officina is to serve pizza for the first time. The style? ‘Nonna’s’, or rutiello, a Neapolitan variation where the pizza is cooked in a deep(ish) pan. It’s the style that led to Detroit pizza: Italian immigrants would use steel pans used to store nuts and bolts for baking.
  

• Yet more smashburgers? Enter Fat Phill’s, a Dutch brand out of Amsterdam that has opened a London debut in Clapham Junction. Smashburgers, yes, and more Nashville hot chicken, but there’s also a ‘hot tamale burger’, tater tots and waffle fries, as well as Philly cheesesteaks and shakes.
   

To get the CODE Bulletin direct to your inbox every Monday morning sign up here