Shoreditch’s Version of Healing Is a New Lifestyle Hotel With a Famous Chef on the Pans

The London hotel equation is alive and well folks

Between 2017 and 2019, boutique London hotels across the city arrived at a winning formula: They would open destination restaurants overseen by chefs already extremely famous for destination restaurants, but do so in a way that walked a tightrope between “dishes recognisably influenced by this chef” and “dishes that a tired person with plenty of money or a sceney nightlife person with plenty of money will order when they check in to a hotel.” Theatrical preparations of classics, like a Spanish tortilla weighed down with caviar.

But with the Covid-19 pandemic having permanently disrupted both international travel and its relationship with restaurants, surmised best by the word “gastrotourism,” they are now in need of a new formula for success they are actually going to continue doing exactly the same thing.

And so here is Bibo by Dani Garcia, the replacement for Red Rooster by Marcus Samuelsson, at Mondrian Shoreditch, itself a replacement for The Curtain Hotel in Shoreditch. Garcia, an Andalusian chef, is best known for his eponymous three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Marbella, which he closed in 2019 declaring himself “fed up with haute cuisine.” (He did not, however, engage in the theatre of “giving back” his three stars.) Bibo already exists in Madrid, Marbella, Cádiz, and Doha, offering dinky brioches, an oxtail ravioli dish served since 1998, and familiar hotel dining keystones: a tableside Caesar salad; an extensive raw bar; croquetas, steaks, and burgers. It’s expected to open in late June 2021, and will have Nobu’s newish hotel to contend with.

And in other news...

• Wildly extra Italian group Big Mamma will open a third wildy extra restaurant in the city, with Ave Mario — in the planning since 2019 — boasting a 60 (sixty) centimetre ice cream cake and Venetian caviar.
• Vibey NYC all-dayer Sunday in Brooklyn confirms its arrival in Notting Hill, which is rapidly turning into “what if Silver Lake, but explicitly conservative.”
• Angelo Sato’s new Soho restaurant, Humble Chicken, will fully open on 20 May, with a positive sounding approach to yakitori once you get past the phrase “comb-to-tail.”
• The best new cafes in London feature two south east contenders and a very stylish space in the City.
• Jason Atherton is going all in on concession money by following up his Biltmore restaurant in Grosvenor Square with a new opening at Harrods. [Big Hospitality]
• Good tweet: