Silo’s more than just a no-waste restaurant; it’s a culinary
vision of the future rooted in the past. Many ingredients are grown
on-site in
Hackney Wick or sourced locally, and prepared in the most
environmentally sensitive of ways as part of what it calls a
“pre-industrial food system”. The menu is a tight edit of culinary
experiments that can be ordered as a series of sharing plates or as
a six-course tasting menu. No-waste, no-guilt, no-fuss food.

Given that Flor’s sibling restaurant, Lyle’s, crept into the top
50 restaurants in the world last year, it’s unsurprising that
Londoners welcomed this restaurant-cum-bakery to Borough Market’s
hotchpotch of elegant fine-dining spots with open arms. Inside,
dusty brick walls and bistro-style chairs echo the buvettes of
Paris and the pintxos bars of San Sebastian. Plates are small –
puntarelle with lemon and bottarga, or speck flatbread with
shallots and stichelton, for instance – so order a few before
mopping them up with sourdough, all the while sipping on
sustainably sourced wine, of course.

Ever since clinching top spot in the final of the Masterchef:
The Professionals 2018, William JM Chilila has been working on
Akoko, a West African fine-dining restaurant which will open to
guests on Berners Street this spring. “Akoko” translates as “the
first” from Yoruba: an apposite name for a restaurant which
promises to surprise Londoners with an elevated take on West
African dishes. Expect delicately smoked goat consommé, spiced
jollof rice and grilled, aged beef suya (kebab) with caramelised
onion and confit tomato.

Those who have yet to come across the cronut (erm, how?) are in
for a treat this year as Dominique Ansel, the brains behind that
headline-grabbing croissant-donut hybrid, launches a full-blown,
sit-down restaurant on Covent Garden’s Floral Street. While the à
la carte menu is expected to be primarily pie, bread and
pasta-based, fans of the cronut need not fret; visitors will be
able to get their pastry fill from the restaurant’s ground-floor
bakery.

Think you know Italian food? Think again. This new opening from
the team behind The Stafford London picks apart Sardinian food as
we commonly know it, and repackages it with all of its Moorish
influences deliciously intact. Its Trapani-style seafood stew with
fennel, chilli and saffron couscous is exemplary of the menu’s
East-meets-West sensibility.

After a five-year hiatus from London’s culinary scene, Tom
Aikens, the Michelin-starred “enfant terrible” of British fine
dining, returns this January with Muse, an intimate, 25-seat
concept restaurant tucked away in a mews house off Belgrave Square.
The as yet undisclosed menu has been described by Aikens as “a
gastronomic autobiography”, which will draw upon sentimental places
and people in his life. We look forward to eating his words, cover
to cover.

Bubala means “darling” or “sweetheart” in Yiddish, and its
namesake restaurant has been hitting the sweet spots of many East
Londoners since its opening last summer. Head chef Helen Graham’s
menu is speckled with echoes of Ottolenghi – think: pomegranate,
tahini and ras el hanout – but occasionally dips into more
traditional Middle Eastern fare, serving pumpkin tirshy (a type of
dip) and homemade malawach (Yemeni flatbread).

A former art gallery in Mayfair might not sound like the most
obvious setting for the London outpost of an Ibiza-themed
restaurant, especially if your idea of Ibiza means EDM raves and
sun-downers in San Antonio. IT is fine-dining old-school
Ibiza-style, which means Balearic DJs and spectacular showpiece
dishes. True to the restaurant’s original site, it will also double
up as a gallery space for emerging artists.

The Compton Arms might look like your typical British pub, but
don’t let the run-of-the-mill decor fool you. When chef duo, Four
Legs, started sizzling away in the kitchen last year, it quickly
gained a reputation for serving up the best burger in London. The
menu here places an emphasis on British produce and meat – lots of
it. Vegans, take note.

Over the past year, Londoners have been nudging northwards as
creative spaces such as Five Miles and Grow Tottenham have
gradually started to repurpose N15’s industrial warehouses as cafés
and nightclubs. Torshi is one such hangout, serving food inspired
by the Levant in a pared-back setting. On weekends, the restaurant
transforms into a techno club. Either leave at a sensible hour or
hunker down for a digestif, of sorts.