Michelin-starred City Social overlooks the iconic Gherkin building building, both of which, upon entering, command a reverence that few new-builds can hope to achieve. And yet the City is also a place of creative destruction. It has seen waves of regeneration over the past centuries, dating back to Roman bathhouses and Christopher Wren’s designs that followed the fire of 1666, a cycle that has led contemporary Londoners, like their predecessors, not to be precious about preserving anything second-rate. It is why the last decades have seen skyscrapers grow into a small forest in the City, why seven more buildings taller than 150 metres are currently rising amid scatterings of cranes that hover over smaller projects in progress, and why deep underground, below the Tube, Europe’s largest infrastructure project, Crossrail, is extending a new rail track out to Heathrow Airport by way of west London, making the metropolis still easier to navigate. One reason west London residents, as well as musicophiles from across the globe, might now be drawn east is the return of one of Britain’s national treasures, Sir Simon Rattle. The conductor has been at the fore of the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the world’s premier orchestras, since 2002, and he has returned to the country of his birth this year to helm the London Symphony Orchestra. Such is the dedication of the City to the arts that Rattle’s return is also the occasion for a relaunch of its artistic programme: the Barbican Arts Centre, not only a brutalist masterstroke but also one of the world’s largest complexes of its kind, combining music, art, theatre and cinema, will add a Centre for Music, whose showpiece will be a new concert hall for Rattle and the LSO, while the Museum of London will expand significantly in its new home next to Smithfield Market. With these as pitch posts, the City is seeking to magnify its appeal further through the Culture Mile initiative, named after one of the area’s monikers, the Square Mile (the City is approximately that size). Working alongside local institutions such as the Whitechapel Gallery and the forthcoming Museum of Photography, it seeks to turn the City into a major global cultural destination. “What’s changed in recent years,” Sir Nicholas Kenyon, managing director of the Barbican, told Centurion, “is the desire to draw all this history, innovation and achievement together so we work in a more coordinated way to present our activities to audiences, and to animate the spaces in between our buildings and create a sense of welcome.” Walking the winding byways and alleys of the City, amid architecture both old and new, it’s easy to recognise that animation and effervescence everywhere you look – from the taverns spilling out onto the pavements to the increasingly popular co-working spaces and the eateries that are winning global accolades – and to know that while the bongs of Big Ben remaining silent, London is moving forward into yet another new era. 82 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM CONTACT CENTURION SERVICE FOR BOOKINGS
ECLECTIC EATS “The City is undergoing a food revolution right now,” says Laura Harper-Hinton, co-owner of Caravan Restaurants – and that might be understating it. For years, the last bastion of dismal British cuisine was the Square Mile, where fine dining amounted to little more than pairing expensive wines with overcooked meat. How times change. The City and its immediate surrounds now boast nine Michelin-starred restaurants, just two of which existed a decade ago, and the culinary creativity on offer spans the globe. Take Spitalfields, a slice of Shoreditch centred on the market of the same name on the eastern fringe of the Square Mile: there’s French fare at Galvin La Chapelle (galvinrestaurants. com) under the arched ceiling of a former chapel; superb seafood at Wright Brothers (thewrightbrothers. co.uk); stripped-back Portuguese casual plates at Nuno Mendes’s Taberna do Mercado (tabernamercado.co.uk); regional Thai specialities amid the neighbourhood’s defining warehouse aesthetic at Som Saa (somsaa. com); the third sit-down location of Mediterranean-minded Ottolenghi (ottolenghi.co.uk); Himalayan sharing plates at Madame D ( $ madame-d.com) that even the conservative Michelin committee just commended with a Bib Gourmand; the flagship Hawksmoor (thehawksmoor.com), London’s favourite steakhouse; inventive fine dining paired with graffiti at The Frog (thefrogrestaurant.com); and among many others St John Bread & Wine (stjohngroup.uk.com), the casual cousin of the original nose-to-tail eatery St John, which is still going strong in its original location near Smithfield Market. Speaking of which: the area around the meat market – which is still in operation – is another dining must, from Italo-British standout Luca (luca. restaurant) and British New Wave diner Foxlow (foxlow.co.uk) to the small Venetian-style plates at Polpo (polpo.co.uk), the casual charm of Ask for Janice (askforjanice.co.uk) and the bounty of Hix Oyster & Chop House (hixrestaurants.co.uk), the first restaurant by London culinary titan Mark Hix. Inside the City, new developments are leading the way: earlier this year London’s second Coya (coyarestaurant.com), a Peruvian hotspot, opened in the new Angel Court building; Jason Atherton has further burnished his London portfolio with another feted destination, Temple and Sons (templeandsons.co.uk), dedicated to all foods British; and the forthcoming Bloomberg Arcade will host Harper-Hinton’s sharing-plate Caravan (caravanrestaurants.co.uk), the wood-fired pizzas of Homeslice (homeslicepizza.co.uk) as well as Brigadiers (jksrestaurants.com), a new concept based on a traditional Indian Army mess from neo-Indian pioneer JKS, also behind Trishna and Gymkhana. Ambitious young chefs fresh from some of the capital’s top restaurants are coming to the area as well, from James Cochran EC3 ( $ jcochran.restaurant), the eponymous all-day British tapas eatery from the former Ledbury chef, to The Grill at McQueen (thegrillmcqueen.co.uk), headed up by former Hawksmoor toques and continuing the carnivorous fare in its hip Shoreditch milieu, not to mention Cub (lyancub.com), which is a new project from drinks impresario Ryan Chetiyawardana, known as Mr Lyan, placing equal emphasis on food and liquid. Elsewhere in Shoreditch, The Clove Club (thecloveclub.com) and Lyle’s (lyleslondon.com), both focusing on British produce, have become Michelin-starred landmarks, while Peruvian Martin Morales’s Ceviche (cevicheuk.com) and Andina (andinalondon.com) have deservedly devoted followings. Still to come, HongKong darling Duddells (duddells.co) is arriving in Borough soon, just across the Thames, and Bob Bob Exchange will bring the over-the-top Russian decadence of Soho’s Bob Bob Ricard (bobbobricard.com) to one of the City‘s most celebrated new skyscrapers, the wedge-shaped Cheesegrater. CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 83
