Hard-Hit North London High Street Secures Promising New Sichuan Restaurant

A new Sichuan restaurant is scheduled to open on one of north London’s most unpredictable high streets. Upper Street, which has been one of the most concentrated areas of restaurant flux in the past 18 months, is the chosen location for a new restaurant from a chef with form.

A Instagram story post by food writer Felicity Cloake this morning captured a window poster at the site formerly occupied by the Italian mini-chain La Porchetta, whose closure was announced last June. Under the headline, “new restaurant opening” the is called Sichuan House and will be helmed by “awarding winning” Mr Zhou who has occupied head chef positions at Barshu on the Soho-Chinatown border and at Hutong in the Shard.

The notice in the window at 141-142 Upper Street also states that Mr Zhou, who is a third generation professional chef from Sichuan province in southwestern China, is said also to have spent his “formative training” at Hibiscus in Chengdu, before working in Beijing, Shanghai, and London. The restaurant will open next Friday, 24 May.

Eater contributor and Islington resident George Reynolds wrote of the food scene in N1 last year: “Islington is London’s restaurant scene in miniature: a blend of prime high street real estate mired in chain mediocrity; achingly cool indie darlings setting up shop where rents and rates are a little more affordable; world-class immigrant-led assimilation food; and proper, grown-up places, where discerning adults can while away most of an afternoon or evening. All this, plus brunch.”

Although there is an unusually high concentration of restaurants located on high-footfall dining thoroughfare, a stretch referred to six years ago as Supper Street’, in the past 18 months, James Cochran N1, Cabana, Chinese Laundry, Jamon Jamon, Trawler Trash, 15-year-old The Elk in the Woods, and X-Upper have all closed. New openings in the area, in the same period of time, have included Terra Rossa, Llerena, Latteria, and Four Legs at the Compton Arms.

More soon.

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