Selfridges Goes Hard on Late Night Dining With Xiao Long Bao, Pizza, and Red Velvet Lattes

The upcoming Din Tai Fung restaurant at Selfridges will be part of a late night dining space on the yellow department store’s fourth floor, joined by a new opening from Pizza Pilgrims and existing cafes Elan (EL&N) and Bubble Magik.

It won’t open until 22 January 2022, but fans of the pleated, burstingly soupy xiao long bao for which Din Tai Fung is famous are well-used to waiting by now. Despite having opened in Covent Garden in December 2018, that restaurant was meant to be its second. It turned out to the first, with an opening at the Centre Point complex off Tottenham Court Road never getting off the ground during three years of anticipation.

This opening will follow its winning template: dumplings, prepared in an open kitchen, with some yet to be determined dishes exclusive to the location.

Pizza Pilgrims, which will be first to open on 9 December this year, will make a statement entrance of a very particular kind, with guests walking through a three-metre hydroponic basil tunnel in order to access the dining room — which, like the new Din Tai Fung, will seat over 100. The two restaurants will sit alongside the readily Instagrammable drinks and cakes from Elan, and bubble tea from BubbleMagik, with the entire complex open until 11:30 p.m. and boasting its own “express” lift for would-be diners.

The two openings add to Selfridges’s already formidable suite of dining options, in the face of increased food hall style competition in the area with the reopening of Market Halls. More soon.