This new wine bar and restaurant in Newington Green brings two of the most respected pourers in the city — Tom Beattie and Francis Roberts — back to the bar, after leaving P. Franco and Bright respectively to set up an importer. Joined by George Jephson’s architecturally marvellous paté en croute, and former St. John, Flor, and Auberge de Chassinolles chef Jamie Smart’s soigné cooking, it’s a wonderful maturation for London’s natural wine scene.

This is a serious Mexican breakfast kiosk in a Hackney churchyard. Max Fishman, owner of the Quarter Store wine shop and provisioner on Mare Street, has installed chef Rodrigo Cervantes, originally from Mexico City but who has recently cut his teeth at a raft of London’s hottest restaurants, including Smoking Goat, Koya, and Rita’s. The result is a breakfast taco of charred salsa roja, a hash brown, fried egg and four rashers of good smoked bacon glazed with maple syrup and sugar; a breakfast burrito to fortify any morning, and come lunch, gorditas.

Executive chef Prince Durairaj and general manager Glen Leeson of this new Islington pub met at Euston institution Roti King, and have joined forces to evolve the deep London tradition of the desi pub. Drinking food like okra fries and chicken lollipops sits alongside dishes from Durariraj’s Tamil Nadu background, designed to be ordered by the boatload with pints aplenty.

After vacating their cosy premises on Warren Street in the spring, Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer have reimagined Honey & Co’s flagship — a similarly warm, welcoming. now-larger cafe-dining room on Lamb’s Conduit Street. Smart and imaginative dishes, like a mackerel salad with potato, pickled celery, harissa, and preserved lemon; or a crisped lamb shoulder with crushed fresh peas, rocket, mint, feta, and urfa butter demonstrate both chef’s continued commitment to tradition, innovation, and deliciousness. Don’t sleep on first-rate freshly baked pita and a spectacular range of cakes and sweet, spiced bakes.

Pioneering Portuguese chef Nuno Mendes’s London restaurant career has traversed interpretations of molecular gastronomy at Viajante, Portuguese taberna fare at Taberna do Mercado, and ultra-modern kitchen-dining cooking at Mãos. It appears he has settled, in 2022, with a restaurant that distils those styles, one which — with a negroni mixing ginjinha with campari and vermuth, and dishes such as bacalhau à Brás; plumas de porco preto; and arroz de mariscos — is rooted both in London and Lisbon, the two cities which have most influenced Mendes.

As above, so below: JKS Restaurants — the group behind a suite of the city’s best, (Michelin-starred), and most innovative kitchens — has managed to transform Arcade Food Theatre into something worthy of the name (while getting rid of the name altogether. The new new Arcade Food Hall is less of a collection of kitchens and more of a panoptic restaurant in its own right. A new ordering system, with table service and no queueing, makes dining feel effortless, while the range of food on offer makes it as suited to a dinner occasion as to a soaker-upper after a night out in the West End. Hits include Nashville hot chicken and smashburgers at Manna (from Bake Street’s Feroz Gajia); butter chicken everything at Hero; and surprising substance in a tempura prawn nori sando from Sushi Kamon.

Located on the mezzanine floor of Arcade Food Hall, chef and grower Lukie Farrell’s new southern Thai restaurant is an instant, complex hit. Self-consciously decked out to not just reference, but mimic its forbears in Bangkok, with strip lighting and blue tablecloths, and reliant on ingredients grown and prepared not just in Thailand, but in Dorset, it is an embodiment of an evolution in what “authenticity” can mean in food. It is also an outstanding restaurant, with hot and sour curries; some ferociously dry (khlua kling moo, heady with long pepper and turmeric) and some puckeringly sauced (gaeng som talay, of mussels and squid) served over rice, next to fried eggs with crisply billowing skirts.

Eyal Shani’s madcap, parodic, frequently ludicrous pita enterprise has arrived in London, and it’s getting weird from day one. The evocative slash cringe menu confers “naked tomatoes” that are of good quality; a carbfest of a cottage pie pita, and some solid hummus. It fits Soho well, even if the vibe may prove something of an acquired taste.

Akwasi Brenya-Mensa’s debut restaurant is a long time coming, the amalgamation of years of supper clubs and pop-ups. In collaboration with the Africa Centre in Southwark, its initial menus lean into Brenya-Mensa’s Ghanaian heritage, but the project’s future is self-consciously pan-African, designed to act as a nexus for the diaspora in London and articulate the variousness and depth of a continent’s cooking too often reduced to tropes.

After leaving Covent Garden, and before opening in a new location, Asma Khan’s outstanding Darjeeling Express will pop up in west London, with reservations available until the end of November. The menu consists of Calcuttan snack platters; toasties, made with chilli cheese or kaju aloo; and hearty rice dishes, including methi chicken and tamatar gosht, and its celebrity fans are already coming in hot: Schitt’s Creek star Dan Levy has been in to dine.

Rebecca Spaven and Oliver Costello had time to hone Frog as a pop-up before opening this first bakery on Peckham Road, it’s true. But it remains rare that a debut, particularly in this finicky field, opens with such aplomb that it’s immediately challenging the best of the best in the city for supremacy. A bear claw made savoury with chipotle beef and adobo; an asparagus, Baron Bigod, and Coppa croissant; and a strawberry and elderflower croissant are early stars.