Joe’s Oriental Diner and Bleecker St Burger (pictured above) are now open. Joe’s Oriental Diner on King’s Road has started soft launch and will officially open on 6 March. It is the work of Scott Hallsworth, the man behind nearby Kurobuta.
Former Nobu chef Hallsworth described the food at Joe’s as ‘things I’ve eaten on my travels or in Asian restaurants around London’, and they will include fire cracker chicken, crunchy sweet and sour fish and slow-cooked duck red curry with lychees.
And you can wash it all down with frosted beer tankards and Chinatown teapot cocktails. There’s seating for up to 38 guests, with an open kitchen and central bar and a secret ‘den’ upstairs that seats another 26 people.
Across town in Spitalfields Market, Bleecker St Burger is set to give away 400 limited edition t-shirts to mark its opening. Founder Zan Kaufman started selling burgers from a food truck in 2012. Prior to that, she was a corporate lawyer in New York, where she found inspiration in ‘the best burger’ at Zaitzeff in the East Village. She started worked at the restaurant in her free time to learn the craft of burger-making. Bleecker St Burger is named after her favourite street in Manhattan.
Her burgers are made from rare-breed, grass-fed beef from small farms in the UK and supplied by The Butchery in Bermondsey, served in a sesame seed bun, homemade burger sauce and American cheese. The burgers are accompanied by the likes of hand-cut fries, sodas, craft beers and shakes.
Let us know what you think of London’s newcomers here.