London Porridge Specialist Moves Into Borough Market With Rising Star at the Helm

Popular London porridge specialist 26 Grains will add to its Seven Dials restaurant with a new opening in Borough Market. Stoney Street, run by Henrietta Inman, will open all day, following on from the success of Inman’s residency at Yardarm in Leyton. The restaurant will also incorporate a takeaway hatch for pastries, according to Hot Dinners, and will open on the site of the former Chez Michele florist and Wokit, next door to celebrated dairy and cheese toastie slinger Kappacasein. The restaurant’s opening — alongside Flor, one of London’s hottest restaurants, and Bao’s new Borough Market site — precedes the opening of a new, food court-ish area, all of which speaks to a shift in the character of London’s oldest food market.

There will be grains, if not 26 of them. Six grain and seed porridge with apples, blackberries, lemon cream, butterfly sorrel, and puffed barley will lead at breakfast, alongside the seasonal tarts and pastries that were a hallmark of Inman’s residency in north east London. Lunch and dinner are in the broadly European-ish ballpark of small plates by now engrained in this kind of restaurant offer: warm chicory, pear and raclette — from Kappacasein, natch; a focaccia sandwich with anchovy hazelnut butter, wilted cavolo nero, Yorkshire pecorino and land cress. At dinner, there is fresh pasta; bavette steak with Swiss chard and taleggio; a chocolate mousse, all which might find their way out on to the terrace at the back.

Stoney Street is scheduled to open in October this year. More soon.