Chef Adam Handling Looks to Grow His Empire With Acquisition of New Shoreditch Site

The modern British chef Adam Handling who has two restaurants — both called The Frog — in Shoreditch and Covent Garden has reportedly acquired the premises recently vacated by the struggling burger chain, Byron, on Hoxton Square, just off Old Street.

Eater understands from sources that Handling will add a third restaurant to his portfolio later this year. The restaurant will join the recently opened rotisserie chicken spot Cocotte and the popular Italian pizzeria, Radio Alice on the square. At the start of the year, the modern European bistro, 8 Hoxton Square closed, as its owners decided to focus their attentions on a new brewery outside of the capital.

The first Frog restaurant opened off Brick Lane in June 2016, Handling’s first independent project, having previously been the head chef — and later chef proprietor — at the Caxton Grill restaurant at the St. Ermin’s Hotel in St. James, Westminster.

Frog by Adam Handling, a self-styled flagship within the Frog group, opened in Covent Garden in September last year. Among other reasons, it shot to fame after restaurant critic Giles Coren’s immortal Instagram story live chronicling his displeasure at a customer working on his laptop — a customer later revealed to be Handling himself.

In June last year, Handling opened a cafe and deli, Bean and Wheat on Artillery Passage in Spitalfields — itself a business which sought to eliminate food wastage across the Frog restaurants.

When Handling opened the flagship site in Covent Garden last year, he renamed the original The Frog E1, pledging to add the appropriate postcode a suffix to any subsequent restaurants.

Eater awaits confirmation from the chef and his representatives about the opening of The Frog N1.

More soon.