Dylan Jones
Credit: Dylan Jones
I love September as it feels like the start of a new term. Everyone is back from holiday, has a tan, and is looking forward to the autumn season, filled with launches, parties, exhibitions, private views, restaurant openings and red-carpet events. I divide my time between London and New York, so I get the best of both worlds, but each year London seems busier than ever. In fact, it now feels as though the city has two social seasons: one running from May to the end of July, and another beginning in September and carrying us through to Christmas.
I'm especially looking forward to this autumn as my new book, Table Hopping: The Secret History of London Restaurants, is published on 1 October. It tells the story of London's restaurant scene from the 1970s to today, and involved interviews with more than 100 chefs, restaurateurs, critics and celebrity regulars. Given the subject matter, my hotlist entry is dedicated to some of my favourite places to eat in London.
At the top of the list is The Park, Jeremy King's Hyde Park restaurant, which has become a regular neighbourhood favourite. The Dover remains one of the most stylish spots in Mayfair and a perfect place for a Negroni, while Soho Mews House, tucked away in Mayfair, is perhaps the most exclusive Soho House in town. Café Clement, at Nick Jones' new St Clement hotel on the Embankment, is already attracting a loyal crowd, and Kendal Street Kitchen in Connaught Village is a local gem serving an excellent Greek salad and a superb wine list. Finally, Simpsons, another Jeremy King success story, has been brilliantly revived and is once again one of London's great destinations for lunch.
Dylan Jones is Chief Content Officer of Robb Report and author of Table Hopping: The Secret History of London Restaurants, from Langan's Brasserie to The Wolseley (Constable, £30), published 1 October.
Food: NAKIMUSHI, Notting Hill
Credit: Hot Dinners
NAKIMUSHI is going to be one of Notting Hill’s most intriguing new openings this September and in fact, year. Bringing together two cult Japanese residencies from Robin’s Ramen and Urchin, both under one roof in a three-storey Victorian townhouse just moments from Notting Hill Gate. Opening on the 7th September at 7 Kensington Mall, it splits into a lively ground-floor ramen bar with an open kitchen and communal seating as well as a more intimate upstairs restaurant and cocktail bar. The interiors are suitably atmospheric, with a deep oxblood frontage, pale timber, brass details, parquet flooring and hand-glazed Japanese tiles creating a warm, Tokyo-meets-Notting-Hill feel. Food-wise, expect seriously tempting bowls of lobster ramen with seafood paitan and komatsuna and chashu pork-belly ramen with Basque chicken broth and ajitama, alongside pork-and-lobster gyoza, hogget skewers with yuzu-kosho labneh and corn tempura. Upstairs the cooking becomes more ambitious, with coal-grilled Welsh lobster chazuke and aged Yorkshire Black Holstein beef cooked over robata. Unreal sounding dishes all round. The drinks list is equally Japanese-led, with shochu highballs such as the Midori-Hai (shochu, Midori, miso sherry and shiso) and Hato-Hai, plus an extensive sake selection ranging from bright, unpasteurised nama sakes to rare aged pours, alongside Burgundy- and Italy-focused wines. You definitely need to head here when you are hungry to make the most of all that’s on offer. The atmosphere will be intentionally buzzy and sociable but if you wanted a more relaxed vibe then upstairs is the one for you.
Bar: Whiskey & Seaweed
Credit: Core by Claire Smith
Hidden inside the newly restored Admiralty Arch, Whiskey & Seaweed will be a fresh and different take on the hotel bar. The intimate drinking den comes from three-Michelin-starred chef Clare Smyth, who is bringing the concept from her Notting Hill restaurant Core to this extraordinary new setting. Its name is a nod to Smyth’s Potato and Roe dish and the drinks follow that same distinctly British, coastal thread: expect a vast collection of whiskeys sourced from distilleries across the UK, alongside an extensive cocktail list and carefully chosen wines, with light bar snacks available for those who want to linger. The setting is arguably the biggest draw. Admiralty Arch, the Grade I-listed landmark designed by Sir Aston Webb in 1911, has undergone a painstaking restoration, with original brass details uncovered, ironwork refreshed and the limestone exterior carefully restored; the hotel will also reveal two new sculptural maidens on the façade. Inside, Whiskey & Seaweed is intended to be intimate and stylish rather than grand and formal, offering a more discreet place to drink within one of London's most historic buildings. We see this as one of the more atmospheric new bars to arrive in central London this autumn. From what we can read, the opening will be phased so don’t be too glum if it takes you a few months to get in, it will be worth the wait!
Book: Table Hopping: The Secret History of London Restaurants, Dylan Jones
Credit: Dylan Jones
In October 1976, the London restaurant world was turned upside down when Michael Caine, celebrated chef Richard Shepherd and Irish entrepreneur Peter Langan opened Langan's, a celebrity hangout that would revolutionise the capital's dining scene. This soon became the most celebrated restaurant in the city and helped turn London into an internationally recognised culinary hot spot. Inheriting its status from Mr. Chow and St. Lorenzo, Langan's was soon joined by Joe Allen, Le Caprice and L'Escargot, making London the most vibrant restaurant capital of the age. London never looked back. In the five decades since, the city has become the global culinary petri dish, a multi-cultural hotbed of super chefs and gastronomic ingenuity, of monstrous egos and appalling kitchen behaviour, bad reviews and scabrous critics (AA Gill, Giles Coren and Michael Winner), dictatorial maître ds, inter-restaurant feuding (Jeremy King v Richard Caring, Jamie Oliver v Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsey v Gino D'Acampo, Marcus Wareing and Mario Batali), ridiculous trends (everything from nouvelle cuisine and kimchi to tasting menus and wine pairings), scandals (Gordon Ramsey, Boris Becker, Jamie Oliver), difficult customers ("What do you mean I can't have Table 3?"), financial shenanigans, global media attention and more. Written with Dylan Jones's trademark glamour and wit, Table Hopping reveals all you need to know about the fine dining world of one of the greatest cities in the world.
Food: Cassette
Credit: Cassette
The team behind Peckham favourites Levan and Bar Levan are bringing their relaxed, neighbourhood style of dining to central London with Cassette, a new French bistro opening on Maiden Lane this month. Housed in a characterful former 19th-century stained-glass workshop, the restaurant occupies a Grade II-listed building dating back to the 1630s, with soaring ceilings and double-height windows that give the space a wonderfully airy feel while still lending itself to an intimate, convivial atmosphere once the tables are filled. The concept is essentially a love letter to the Parisian bistro because the founders have drawn inspiration from everything from bustling neighbourhood spots to countryside auberges, with former Planque chef Essa Fakhry heading up the kitchen. His menu will put a contemporary spin on French classics, with dishes including coq-au-vin jaune pie, grilled monkfish au poivre and fromage de tête terrine with tarragon, while the wine list will carry on Levan's reputation for interesting, low-intervention bottles sourced from producers the team knows personally. Even the name has a musical connection: Cassette reflects founders Mark Gurney and Matt Bushnell's long-standing love of music, record labels and DJing, suggesting this will be as much about atmosphere as what's on the plate. With around 50 covers, the aim is for Cassette to feel like the sort of place you can drop into for a long lunch, a glass of wine after work or a proper dinner, bringing a little of the easy, sociable rhythm of a Parisian neighbourhood bistro to the heart of Covent Garden.
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Exhibition: The Burberry Trench: Crafting an Icon
Credit: V&A
Few pieces of clothing are as instantly recognisable as the Burberry trench coat and from the 21st, the V&A is giving the British icon its own spotlight with The Burberry Trench: Crafting an Icon. Marking Burberry’s 170th anniversary, this free display brings together rare pieces from the brand’s archive and the V&A’s own collection to trace the trench’s journey from practical military outerwear to one of fashion’s most enduring symbols. The exhibition is housed in the V&A’s Prince Consort Gallery, a particularly atmospheric setting that was previously used to store the museum’s textile collection in mahogany cabinets. Visitors can follow the story through three themes, Invention, Craft and Creativity, exploring everything from Thomas Burberry’s pioneering 1879 invention of shower-resistant cotton gabardine to the meticulous details that make a trench a trench, including its storm flap, hand-finished collar, check lining and throat latch. The finale brings the story firmly into the fashion world with 19 standout runway looks from the past 25 years, including designs by Christopher Bailey and Daniel Lee, demonstrating just how many ways the classic silhouette has been reimagined. With pieces ranging from a 1930s–40s trench coat catalogue to an embellished 2015 design and a striking purple fringed version from Winter 2025, this is less a traditional fashion exhibition than a close-up look at how British design, craftsmanship, function and fashion have combined to create a genuine cultural icon. Best of all, entry is completely free.
Festival: Thamesmead
Credit: Soho Place
For a theatrical night out with considerably more bite than your average West End production, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? arrives at Soho Place on the 21st with a heavyweight pairing of Gillian Anderson and Billy Crudup as the famously combustible Martha and George. Directed by Tony and Olivier Award-winner Marianne Elliott, this new production is staged in the round, putting the audience right inside the couple’s increasingly vicious domestic battle rather than safely observing from the sidelines. The story unfolds over one alcohol-fuelled night, when Martha and George invite younger academic Nick and his wife Honey back for drinks, only for the evening to descend into a series of cruel games, secrets and increasingly uncomfortable revelations. The intimate Soho Place setting should make the experience particularly intense, with the circular staging leaving nowhere for the characters, or you, to hide as the tension builds. Running for approximately three hours including an interval, performances are scheduled Monday–Saturday at 7pm, with Wednesday and Saturday matinees at 2pm and the strictly limited season runs until the 19th December. This is not a quick West End pit stop. You should expect sharp humour, emotional fireworks and two actors who should make Albee’s famously volatile marriage feel uncomfortably close. Tickets are available from £40.
Event: Bayeux Tapestry
Credit: The Bayeux Tapestry Collectors Edition
One of the most extraordinary pieces of medieval history is finally coming home. From the 10th of the month, the 70-metre-long Bayeux Tapestry will go on display at the British Museum for the first time since it was created almost 1,000 years ago, making this one of the biggest cultural events in London this autumn. Created in the 11th century from wool embroidered onto linen, the tapestry tells the story of the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England in 1066, culminating in the Battle of Hastings and William the Conqueror's victory. But seeing it in person is about far more than revisiting a familiar history lesson: stretched out across the gallery, its extraordinary detail reveals medieval life through 58 scenes, 626 human figures and 202 horses, alongside ships, weapons, castles, feasts, animals and glimpses of everyday life. The British Museum is also using the opportunity to put the tapestry into a wider historical context, drawing on objects from its own collection and other loans to explore the people, politics and culture of England and Normandy at the time. Housed in the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery, the exhibition runs until the 11th July next year, although getting a ticket may require some forward planning: the initial September–December 2026 allocation has already sold out, with further tickets due to be released so get in quick. For anyone interested in British history, medieval art or simply seeing an object that has survived nearly a millennium, this is about as close as London gets to a genuine once-in-a-lifetime encounter.
Music: Grimeborn Opera Festival
Credit: Arcola Theatre
If you think opera means grand theatres, evening dress and eye-watering ticket prices, Grimeborn is here to change your mind. Returning to Dalston’s wonderfully unconventional Arcola Theatre for its 19th year, the festival runs until this Saturday so this is your last chance to jump on this year's event. It brings a wonderfully unruly mix of new opera, radical reinterpretations and chamber productions into the theatre’s intimate studios. This year's programme includes 13 operas, six brand-new works and seven reimagined classics, with subjects ranging from the climate crisis and social injustice to murder, politics and women’s experiences. The September highlight is Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto, which runs from 2nd to the 5th in a close-up chamber staging by New Trinity Baroque, with period instruments, an international cast and the audience just metres from the action. What makes Grimeborn particularly appealing is its atmosphere: this is deliberately intimate, experimental opera staged in a former textile factory in the heart of Dalston rather than a grand Covent Garden auditorium, with productions that are often playful, provocative and far removed from the traditional opera-house experience. Tickets are remarkably accessible, with prices for Giulio Cesare ranging from £15 to £39 and the festival's wider programme offering plenty of opportunities to discover emerging composers and performers.
Family: Moon Celebration Week, Royal Observatory Greenwich
Credit: National Maritime Museum Greenwich London
September is a particularly good time to look skyward (even after the eclipse madness of August!), with Moon Celebration Week returning to the Royal Observatory Greenwich from the 12th to 20th as part of a worldwide celebration of our closest celestial neighbour. Across the week, the Observatory is putting on a programme of talks, family activities, workshops and observing sessions, offering a chance to learn about everything from lunar exploration and the science behind the Moon's phases to the latest discoveries from space missions. The highlight for many visitors will be the opportunity to look at the Moon through the Observatory's historic telescopes, with astronomers on hand to explain what you're seeing and point out lunar features that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye. There are also activities designed for younger visitors, making this an easy one to do as a family, while the evening observing sessions offer something rather more atmospheric for adults. Set high on Greenwich Hill, with the Observatory's historic buildings and sweeping views across London as a backdrop, it combines a little science with a genuinely lovely way to spend an evening, particularly if you time your visit for sunset and stay on to watch the Moon rise over the city.
Charity of the Month: Run Wild, London Zoo
Credit: © ZSL
For a charitable morning with a difference, Run Wild at London Zoo is launching as the zoo’s first-ever family fun run on the 20th, giving participants the unusual chance to race through the zoo before it opens to the public. There are two routes: a 1-mile course entirely inside the zoo for children aged 4–15 and their parents or guardians and a 5km route for ages 11 and over, which heads out through Regent’s Park before returning to the zoo. The event hub opens at 7.30am, with the mile starting at 8.30am and the 5km at 9am, so you can be finished with the running before most Londoners have had breakfast. Every participant receives a medal, and importantly, your entry includes full admission to London Zoo for the rest of the day, turning the morning into a much bigger family outing. It’s also a fundraiser for the Zoological Society of London’s conservation work, with the money raised helping to protect endangered wildlife, including tigers; raise £80 and you’ll even receive a cuddly ZSL tiger toy. Entry is £35, and the run is designed to be inclusive so you can run, jog or wheel your way around the course, with the 1-mile route specifically intended for younger children. It’s a wonderfully different way to experience the zoo, particularly for children, who get to see it from a completely new perspective before the gates open and the usual crowds arrive.