Jeremy King
October to December tends to be my busiest time of the year and stewarding Arlington and The Park continues to keep me happy and on my toes. But the New Year re-birth of Simpson’s-in-the Strand is both exciting and challenging – exacerbated by the Contractor going bust a month ago! The opening will preoccupy me and despite the delay till February the customer anticipation is both gratifying and somewhat intimidating. But I thrive on challenge and the added one of having just published a book (part memoir, part lessons learnt) exposes me emotionally in a way I had never expected. As I say within it: Happy Problems!” Simpsons’s will be I think my 15th restaurant and this can only happen because I somehow manage to emulate the amnesia that mothers go through when giving birth – if the brain could recall more authentically then we would never attempt again.
But there is more to life than birth and there is so much happening in London this ‘Fall’ to distract. Wayne Thiebaud’s Food obsessed oeuvre at the Courtauld is a fairly obvious Restaurateur Choice but really worth it, and I cant wait to see the ‘Peggy Gugenheim in London’ show at The Royal Academy’. However I implore you not to miss the Lee Miller exhibition at Tate Britain which has every ingredient one seeks in humanity: beauty, sex, style, adversity, perseverance, tenacity, equality, insight, understanding, vision, outrage, determination, empathy – all while acting as an excruciating but timely witness to fascism, dictatorship and our capacity for inhumanity, cruelty & genocide
- Jeremy King’s ‘Without Reservation – lessons learnt from a life in Restaurants’. Is published by Fourth Estate
Food: Corenucopia
Credit: Instagram
Corenucopia is coming to Holbein Place in Chelsea this month, helmed by the Michelin-star legend Clare Smyth. This new “luxury bistro” promises British-roots cooking with a cheeky modern twist: think grilled Dover sole or a lemon-meringue-pie-meets-rice-pudding. It will be relaxed, beautiful plates under your nose with a wine list that actually reflects the food’s ambition. Signature dishes may include her iconic ‘Potato & Roe’ which is Charlotte potato, dulse beurre blanc, herring and trout roe, as well as the crowd-favourite ‘Lamb Carrot’, where braised lamb meets sheep’s-milk yoghurt and a heritage carrot star. Interiors wise, you’ll find Corenucopia feels more like a beautifully dressed home than a formal restaurant with buttery leather banquettes, soft amber lighting and polished wood warmth. There’s an elegant hum about the place: low ceilings that cocoon rather than confine and glints of brass and marble that nod to Chelsea glamour without tipping into pretension. The design mirrors Smyth’s cooking philosophy, precision wrapped in comfort and beauty without stiffness. The name says it all really, a ‘core’, cornucopia of abundance, where ingredients are treated like rock stars, not wallflowers. We advise you take someone who loves food and get ahead of the rush because you’ll want to brag you were there before everyone else did.
Exhibition: Wes Anderson
Credit: The Design Museum
Have you ever wanted to step into a pastel-tinted fever dream of art, film and obsessive detail? Well then, mark your diary for Wes Anderson: The Archives, opening at the Design Museum in Kensington on 21st November and running until 26th July next year. This isn’t your average “let’s look at movie posters” affair because more than 600 objects from the man himself, including his own notebooks, set models, costumes and props, will be on display for the first time in Britain. You’ll be able to see up close, the candy-pink façade model of The Grand Budapest Hotel, vending machines from Asteroid City, and the very FENDI fur coat worn by Margot Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaum's. This is your chance to wander the eccentric, symmetrical worlds of this cinematic icon. There will be hand-made miniatures, puppets, storyboards and the kind of obsessive design vocabulary that turns films into visual feasts. Tickets are already on sale, so if you’re half-tempted, book sooner rather than later, because we predict it’ll be a race for the best viewing slots.
Art: Turner & Constable: Rivals & Originals
Credit: TATE
Art lovers, the epic face-off of the century (well, the 19th-century one) lands in London on the 27th November at the Tate Britain. The exhibition titled Turner & Constable: Rivals & Originals throws two titans of British landscape painting, J.M.W. Turner and John Constable, into the same gallery ring and the result? Pure cultural fireworks. You’ll encounter over 170 paintings and works on paper, from Turner’s blazing spectacle The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (1835) to Constable’s lush The White Horse (1819). This isn’t a sleepy walk-through of bucolic fields, it’s the story of how one painter saw nature as dramatic, wild and elemental (hello Turner), the other found beauty in damp Suffolk skies and river-meadows (hello Constable), and how their rivalry pushed the genre of landscape into high art rather than mere pleasant decoration. Whether you’re already a Turner obsessive, a Constable sweet-spot-finder, or someone who simply enjoys a bit of art drama, this is your moment. Booking ahead is advised, expect the queues, the crowds, and the “oh wow I actually didn’t know that about Turner” moments. Go see who ruled British landscape, who changed the rules, and who walked away with a smug grin.
Culture: Ibraaz
Credit: ibraaz
Ibraaz is a bold new cultural hub that has just opened at 93 Mortimer Street in Fitzrovia. A mere stone’s throw from our offices in fact! This isn’t your typical gallery but rather a six-storey, 10,000-sq-ft Grade II listed building transformed into a space that feels alive. With a Maktaba bookshop, Majlis assembly hall, library-in-residence, café-in-residence with Tunisian food, and exhibitions + events by artists and thinkers from across the “Global Majority”. They kick things off with Ibrahim Mahama’s “Parliament of Ghosts”, a major installation that uses jute sacks and discarded colonial-era furniture to re-examine Ghanaian post-independence. So why should you care? Because this place will make you look again at art, community and politics with seriousness, wit and genuine hospitality. Take your curious self and thank us later.
Children: Paddington - The Musical
It’s time for a rather splendid adventure because Paddington, The Musical is tipping into the heart of the West End as of the 1st November. Taking up residence at the Savoy Theatre and based on Michael Bond's beloved books (and the charming films), this new musical has songs and lyrics by Tom Fletcher of McFly fame, a book by Jessica Swale and direction by Luke Sheppard. So yes, it’s going to be far more dazzling than your average bear on stage of course! Expect big heart, big laughs, and the indisputably delicious marmalade sandwiches galore, as the little bear from Peru crash-lands here in the capital and turns the Brown household upside-down. It’s a family favourite for a reason!!
Music: Pitchfork Music Festival London 2025
Credit: Pitchfork Music Festival
Pitchfork Music Festival London is one of London’s most audacious music weeks and it lands from the 4th to the 8th November across a smorgasbord of legendary venues like The Royal Albert Hall, Roundhouse, Fabric and more. The line-up? Absolutely stacked. There’s genre-defying heavyweights such as King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Laurie Anderson and Oklou, alongside a killer roster of emergent names like Nala Sinephro and Marie Davidson. All is set for five days of sonic detours, electronic oddities, indie wildcards and proper experimental moments, all wrapped into London’s club and theatre settings rather than a muddy field. It’s perfect if you’ve had enough of generic festival fare and actually fancy hearing something new, weird and exhilarating. Google tells us that tickets are selling and venues are intimate enough that missing out would be more regret than “oh well”. This is your moment to live loud, catch something unexpected and say you were at the festival before everyone else found out.
Immersive: Punch Drunk, Lander 23
Credit: Punch Drunk
Punch Drunk is an iconic immersive theatre company, having been around for a whopping quarter of a century!! Their brand-new show LANDER 23 opens in London this month and yes, it’s less “sit back in the dark” and more “you are the tense, rag-tag team trying to escape an alien world”. Set at The Carriageworks in Woolwich, the experience casts you as part of the Lander Division crew investigating the mysterious disappearance of the last team from “Lander 23” on the hostile planet Hisarlik 426. Obvs. Players team up in squads of four, splitting between Command (Drivers) and Ground Team (Fields), with mission-critical instructions and real stakes: you can fail, you can “die”, you can even regenerate. The show has genuine video-game mechanics brought to life. Tickets start at around £23 during preview phase which is a bargain if you dive in early. We can't wait for the high-adrenaline immersion, sci-fi thrill, and bragging rights when our group survives the mission.
Exhibition: Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies
Credit: Somerset House
If you fancy tearing yourself out of your comfort zone and plunging head-first into something spectacularly weird and wondrous, then this is your moment. Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies at Somerset House (Steeped in regal column-vibes, not dance-studio chic) lands in London this November and runs until February 2026. Here’s the kicker: it’s not another stuffy gallery of nice little paintings. Nope. It’s a mash-up of dance, robotics, AI algorithms, motion-capture and immersive installations that ask “What if our bodies were infinite?”. Expect your assumptions to be challenged, your senses to be tingled, and your definition of movement to be completely rewritten. With surprise performances by McGregor’s own company, free-roaming creative energy and tech that looks as if it’s borrowed from sci-fi. It’s pretty spectacular by all accounts.
Charity of the Month: London Playing Fields Foundation
Credit: LPPF
The London Playing Fields Foundation (LPFF) is a stalwart of green-space and grassroots sport in the heart of the capital. Founded in 1890 by visionaries alarmed by London’s disappearing open fields, the charity has spent over a century protecting, providing, and promoting playing fields so that people of all ages, abilities and backgrounds can play sport and get active. LPFF currently manages seven playing grounds across London and runs vital social-inclusion programmes like Green Hearts (encouraging physical activity) and Coping Through Football (helping those facing mental-health challenges) turning fields into places where lives change. Here’s how you can help: donate to support their work (they receive no core funding from central or local government), book one of their grounds for hire (boosting income and community participation) or sign their public charter to campaign for the right to play in perpetuity. By supporting LPFF you’re not just giving money or booking a pitch, you’re safeguarding the future of sport, open space and community in London. Play your part.