Follow the red rabbit down Chiltern Street and you'll encounter another London omakase set to open (three in as many months). Only, this Marylebone restaurant has a slightly different backstory to the other chef-led Japanese joints popping up. The team behind Mayha started the restaurant in Beirut (and run a few other Lebanese restaurants), but this will be their first London outpost, with a daily-changing menu featuring up-to-the-chef offerings. Seating will be at a curved stone counter, but head downstairs and you'll find a hidden courtyard housing a refined izakaya. A Japanese-influenced bartending team will serve pre- and post-dinner drinks, alongside a raw seafood menu. It's opening in January.

Starting the new year with a bang, the Big Mama group is to open its fourth London restaurant, this time in the well-heeled W8 postcode. Mirrored walls, disco balls and everything excessive will fill a former bank building on Kensington High Street, with the team behind Gloria, Circolo Popolare and Ave Mario promising all-out Italian madness (more Versace mansion than the blown-up trattoria traditions seen at the group's Shoreditch spot). Food will be typical of its OTT style - think XXL profiteroles and pasta-filled cheese wheels - and we've also been promised a drinks menu dedicated to all things frothy.

A restaurant opening from the man behind London's most excessive dining rooms (Sexy Fish, The Brasserie of Light) always promises to be a visual feast, and this one in Connaught House doesn't disappoint. Richard Caring's Bacchanalia is large and lavish, housed within a vast Mayfair dining space with Renaissance-style frescoes on the wall and four gigantic Damien Hirst statues featuring unicorns, lions and embracing lovers erupting from central columns. If there was ever a sign that minimalism is retreating to the edges of the hospitality world, it's this. Just take a peek at the loos: mosaics, mirrors, dancing nymphs - the lot. A menu of Greek and Italian plates emphasises the classical slant, with house Caesar salads, Roman flatbreads and risotto Nero providing cheeky nods to the empires of old.

All hail Artfarm; the growing success of the hospitality group launched by Hauser & Wirth's founders proves that it's not just gallery curating they're good at. Mount St. is the latest offering (after The Fife Arms in Braemar and Somerset's Roth Bar & Grill). Opened in October, this first-floor eatery has already had our new sovereign in for supper, and no wonder, as the London-inspired menu is a real canzone to the capital (or should we say sonnet?). Breakfasts include Stepney kippers and old-fashioned kedgeree. For lunch? Try the smoked eel and potato salad. Come dinner, it can only be pigeon, served with duck liver, bacon and red cabbage. Interiors, meanwhile, are primed to showcase the art: look down while you're dining to spot the terrazzo-style mosaic floor by Rashid Johnson.

Another October opening we're still trying to secure a booking for, the first launch from Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver in over a decade sees one of London's most-respected (and most influential) restaurants notching up a third branch, with chef Fintan Sharp at the helm. This one is a London take on Tuscan wine-bar culture, so expect a good drinks list alongside the typical nose-to-tail treats. The restaurant is open all day, starting with St. John doughnuts for breakfast (complete with a champagne chaser) and then a daily-changing blackboard menu as the day progresses, which will include the group's much-loved bone marrow on toast.

FoodTok has entered the chat. If you thought your favourite social app only offered dirty burgers and alarming candy creations in the food department, think again. One of its stars, Thomas Straker, has made video-scrolling a stepping stone to owning his own restaurant. We're exaggerating - a bit. Straker also has kitchen pedigree, having worked at The Dorchester and Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, but it was his pandemic-era posts that made him one to watch - and set London abuzz over his just-opened restaurant. Head there to eat small plates and sharing platters centred around sustainability and seasonality. At only 40 covers, we're expecting it to be a difficult reservation to pin down - especially if his followers are around.

Goodbye, Pret sandwiches. We've been patiently peering out of our Soho office windows for signs that Nessa is about to open. The public-facing part of a new private members' club opening on the corner of Brewer Street and Warwick Street, this neighbourhood bistro - set to start cooking in spring 2023 - will have Tom Cenci in the kitchen (formerly of Duck & Waffle and Loyal Tavern), plating up British classics with a playful, inventive edge.