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French dessert master wants to show off his other layers
Trompe-l’œil pastry master Dominique Ansel’s new Covent Garden opening is throwing London a curveball: it’s a restaurant, not a bakery, and there won’t be a Cronut in sight. Dominique Ansel Treehouse will open at 24 Floral Street, offering a three-course, sit-down menu and an upstairs restaurant with a “treetop canopy,” according to the Evening Standard. It’s not Ansel’s first restaurant — he owns 189 in Los Angeles, which is one restaurant called 189, not one-hundred and eighty-nine restaurants — but it is his first in Europe, and his reputation for eye-catching desserts will precede him in spite of killing that croissant-doughnut darling.
And in other news...
- Here are the hottest restaurants in London right now, kicking off a new decade of dining.
- The 2019 Eater London Year in Review looks back on the year in eating, from the best new restaurants to the worst dining grievances, and predictions for the year to come.
- It’s the Quorn Supremacy, as Greggs and KFC launch vegan steak bakes and chicken burgers respectively on the same day.
- Prolific Indian restaurant group Speciality Restaurants Limited will open a Kolkatan restaurant in Marylebone.
- As Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant group that Heston Blumenthal denies all responsibility for faces trouble in Australia, his most trusted chef departs after 20 years.
- Just in case New Year’s Eve was a real stinker...
- The Times restaurant critic Giles Coren used his end of year contribution to make homophobic remarks about political journalist Owen Jones. Add them to the list. [Independent]
- Another, sadly necessary reminder that “authentic” is simply not fit for purpose in the restaurant world, and it, like the food it used to set traps for, is better understood from a pluralist perspective. [Guardian, Eater]
- Good tweet:
Just saw a dude carrying lettuce in one hand & more lettuce in a bag in his other hand and he was taking bites of the hand lettuce like it was a nice treat. So my resolution for 2020 is I don’t want to see that ever again.
— Chris Calogero (@RealChrisCal) December 31, 2019