‘Indian food is a universe’: Making a home at Chet Sharma’s BiBi April 2, 2026 Quietly but surely, Chet Sharma is serving up some of the tasty plates of food in London. Carys Sharkey meets the chef reimagining fine dining with a healthy serving of nostalgia If you make your way down Oxford Street, past the shops slinging vapes and candy to indiscriminating kids, weaving through the preachers confirming your [...]
Make foreign tourists pay to keep museums free for Londoners April 2, 2026 Free museum entry isn’t the feel-good policy you think it is. Time to charge foreigners and keep our precious collections free for Londoners, says James Ford Is the idea of charging foreign tourists for access to major museums and art galleries really that radical a proposal? Judging by the reaction from some corners of the [...]
Hotel investment tops £1bn in bumper start to year April 1, 2026 UK hotels attracted more than £1bn investment in the first quarter of this year, as the sector defies business rate rises and market uncertainty caused by the Iran war. Hotel investment volume surpassed £1.1bn in the first three months of the year, marking a 63 per cent increase on the £680m recorded in the same [...]
Two-thirds of hospitality firms to cut jobs as April tax rises ‘suffocate’ sector April 1, 2026 Two-thirds of hospitality businesses will be forced to cut jobs and one in seven will shut altogether as a direct result of “suffocating” April tax rises, leading trade bodies have found. More than half (51 per cent) of hospitality firms will cancel investment plans and 42 per cent will reduce trading hours, according to a [...]
“MoN Takanawa: The Museum of Narratives” Opens in Tokyo March 27, 2026 An experimental museum exploring the future of culture for the next hundred years
The new Simpson’s in the Strand is a classic for a new generation March 25, 2026 The culinary calendar is hotting up and the Square Mile and its surrounds are right amongst it. This week I turn to two restaurants in the City of London and the hotly-anticipated ‘new opening’ on the Strand, Simpson’s by Jeremy King. Kolamba East I first discovered Kolamba during the pandemic. One of the few successful [...]
The inside story of the controversial Southbank skate park March 25, 2026 Beginning with the construction of the Royal Festival Hall in 1951, the Southbank Centre in its current form was completed in 1968. When the Queen Elizabeth Hall was added in 1967, the space (or undercroft) beneath the venue’s walkway was designed as somewhere for visitors to sit and take in the view across the Thames. [...]
A hundred not out… yet: Why Veeraswamy is in trouble March 25, 2026 Veeraswamy, the Michelin-starred Indian restaurant on Regent Street, celebrated its centenary on 18 March. But it has found itself in the headlines for other reasons recently: glowingly reviewed by City AM’s own Adam Bloodworth two years ago, it is now in dispute with its landlord, the Crown Estate. Campaigners have even called for the King [...]
Rocco Forte: Inheritance tax grab has endangered my family firm March 25, 2026 With luxury outposts across Europe, and plans to expand to the Gulf, Rocco Forte Hotels has become one of Britain’s most successful hospitality exports. But after being hit by a wave of damaging policies – including a potentially existential inheritance tax crackdown – he tells Ali Lyon, he is more disillusioned with Britain now, than [...]
Hands off our spuds: How Americans ‘discovered’ jacket potatoes March 24, 2026 The New York Times has found about the jacket potato, a British staple the world isn’t ready for, says Steve Dinneen Sometimes in this tightly interconnected world of ours, it takes a New York Times headline to remind us that stark cultural differences still exist. “The British Have Finally Learned to Love Peanut Butter”, the [...]