Smashed: The 2024 UK restaurant scene in review

and a look ahead to 2025

Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash

Now it’s all over, what does 2024 represent to you? I don’t mean genocide, the continuing rise of the far right, Russell Brand’s fake Christianity and season one of Rivals. I’m talking about the important things in life; restaurants. In times gone by, you might have associated a particular year with a trend like molecular gastronomy, open-fire cooking or cassonades (do you remember when cassonades were a thing? Thinking about it, maybe it was just Tom Aikens). For me, 2024 was The Year of the £15.50 Plate of Mushrooms.

Some cooked stuff on a plate that was expensive. No real creativity, not much thought, no real attempt to create a cohesive dining experience. Just stuff on plates that arrived in no particular order that you eat, pay for, go home and feel a bit depressed about. It was the year that good or just OK restaurants were hailed as brilliant and life-changing by the critics who seemed to have forgotten what their job is meant to be about i.e. being critical. It was the year when, given the spiralling cost, I seriously considered if eating outside of the house was still an attractive proposition. In 2025, things can only get shitter.

But the problem with 2024 is that it wasn’t really The Year of the £15.50 Plate of Mushrooms. It was The Year of No Idea What That Was All About. Done well, expensive stuff on a plate delivered in spades, including at Roe and Lolo in London and, less expensively, at Med. in Brighton. Tasting menus are about as old hat as you could possibly get but Interlude in Sussex and Wilderness in Birmingham (among others) proved they can still be a deeply satisfying experience. And then there were meals like Long Chim and. . . . well just Long Chim really, that were simply blinding because of the knowledge, experience and talent of the person behind the stove.

So what did the critics make of 2024? William Sitwell had 15 favourite restaurants that were all pubs in Somerset where he lives. I’m kidding of course, he diligently hammered his expenses, didn’t accept any PR freebies at all and travelled as far and wide as Edinburgh and Somerset, where he lives, to dig out the country’s finest dining establishments.

Four were in his home region of the South West which he says ‘seems to be out-performing much of the country’. I wonder how he got that impression. Three were in London and the remainder in Scotland, Nottinghamshire, Kent, Suffolk, Oxfordshire, Sussex, the Herefordshire/Worcestershire border and Manchester (Skof - see Smashed #31- was his number one). Four were pubs, two were French, two were Japanese, one was Italian, one was ‘global’, one was Sri Lankan, one Mediterranean and three served tasting menus. You see what I mean? No Idea What That Was All About apart from business as usual in Britain’s diverse restaurant scene with not an identifiable trend in sight.

Except that Jay Rayner claimed to have found one - ‘European cooks displaying their profound, ardent love for Asian flavours’. But that’s been the case since Paul Rankin finished his backpacking jollies and opened Roscoff in Belfast in 1989 where he helped to establish the fusion cooking movement. That chefs are still at it in 2024 was hardly headline news, even if it was a thing. His restaurant of the year was Stage in Exeter, a review I managed to miss. ‘Here were fermented discs of kohlrabi bathed in a sauce with all the flavours and richness of chicken liver parfait,’ declaimed Rayner, pretentiously. ‘Here was steak in a miso butter and caper sauce, and grey mullet with salsa verde. Here was a perfect apple tarte tatin.’

I’m pretty sure I had grey mullet with salsa verde followed by apple tart at Avenue restaurant in St James Street in the mid-90s. What does that prove? That, thirty years on, 2024 had nothing new to show us? I don’t know. Rayner’s restaurant choices are so random (he tends to favour places no one else would consider review-worthy for a national title, that are of interest to the locals but no one would seriously consider worth a special journey) that it’s difficult to draw any conclusions.

Maybe we’ll have better luck with Grace Dent. Just over a year ago, in her round-up of 2023 (Smashed #8) she wrote that ‘Costs, Covid and other calamities have made London a less easy place to experiment’. In her recent round-up of 2024, she writes ‘these days, it’s often “not London” where indies can let their imaginations fly, not least because the rent is so much cheaper’. So we’ve gone from London being expensive and inhibitive to experimentation to ‘not-London’ being cheaper and therefore conducive to flights of imagination. Two entirely different things, obviously.

Other revelations include the emergence of Borough Market and Canary Wharf as dining destinations and some good advice about not following in the footsteps of food influencers. Although she hasn’t picked a meal of the year outright, Glasgow bistro Brett (Smashed #28) is mentioned in dispatches alongside Birmingham’s Albatross Death Cult, ‘Charles’s dinner of the year’. That’ll be King Charles III, I bet he loves a bit of tuna belly with strawberry hot sauce.

Not really. ‘Charles’ is actually ‘Charles’, you know, the bloke Dent is shagging. Did we ever get formally introduced to Charles or did he just arrive one day? I can’t remember. Maybe we were meant to have known already, being as avidly interested in Dent’s private life as we all of course are. ‘Grace and Charles’ - sounds like an idea for a podcast. Anyway, Charles is here until he isn’t, or Dent isn’t. She doesn’t seem too sure of her position, signing off the article with: ‘I’ll no doubt be replaced by AI by next Christmas, but while it lasts, it’s a hell of a ride.’ That’s what Charles said etc.

Perhaps understanding what an utterly pointless exercise the end-of-year-round-up actually is, Giles Coren has swerved the whole thing and instead reviewed a restaurant everyone else has already written about, Canteen in Portobello Road (see Smashed #43 ). TPB had similar thoughts and went to Manchester for Fondue, one of life’s immutable inevitabilities. Jimi Famurewa’s end-of-year review on his Seconds Substack newsletter didn’t exist. Famurewa’s total number of posts remains at one and his last note was posted on 13 November. See you at the Observer then Jimi, probably. He did write something for his monthly column at The Good Food Guide but didn’t add a great deal to the discourse so I’ll just let you read it for yourself (it’s behind a paywall but you can read an article or two for free without a subscription).

So let’s move on to the FT’s pick of ‘London best new restaurants 2024’. Or maybe not. If you’ve been paying attention at all over the last 12 months, you’ll have read about pretty much every single one of the 27 places on their list (we’re talking Oma, Café François, The Dover, Morchella, Joséphine Bouchon et al). The possible exception might be Busters which is a ‘counter-and-stool bar under an arch in Brixton’ serving three different types of burgers and pét-nat (pét-nat, fuck me, aren’t we over that yet?). You’ll want to race there, obviously. To be fair, the burgers do look very good.

David Ellis’s 2024 picks were much more satisfyingly oddball, including a Chinese in a shed on the Isle of Dogs, a French bistro in Maida Vale (the wonderful Paulette where I also had one of my favourite meals of 2024, although not with Ellis) and the legendary fine diner Pied a Terre, run by friend of Smashed David Moore since 1991. Can you imagine?

So what was 2024 all about? With no discernable trends beyond a vague resurgence for comfort food (but did it ever really go away?) and a fair few French restaurants (did they ever really go away?) was everybody just busy doing their own thing? Well, maybe. The London restaurant scene’s Lord Voldemort, The Irishman Who Must Not Be Named, The Dark Lord of Caledonian Road is a perfect example. And, although opened in late 2023, The Devonshire is another instance of a trend-shunning success in 2024.

With last year representing nothing in particular, what the hell does 2025 have in store for us? By the looks of it, more of what we’ve had in the past. More Gordon Ramsay with his huge Bishopsgate development, more Jeremy King, this time at Simpsons on the Strand, more Adam Byatt at Brasserie Constance in Fulham, more pubs including the ambitious sounding The Prince Arthur in Belgravia, another Joséphine Bouchon, this time in Marylebone and more Richard Caring with his version of Le Caprice at the new Chancery Rosewood Hotel in the old US Embassy building in Mayfair.

Based on the premise that the rich will always get richer no matter what, we also may well see more eye-wateringly expensive high-end experiential restaurants like Jason Atherton’s recently opened Row on 5 that involve some element of theatre or interaction. At Rockcliffe Hall in Darlington, work is due to start next month on a 584-square-metre pavilion that will house a restaurant with an open kitchen where chef James Close, formerly of the now-closed two-Michelin-star Raby Hunt, will interact with guests and offer an ‘immersive experience that takes diners on a culinary journey inspired by the finest global cuisine’ according to the hotel’s website.

Similarly, Northcote in Lancashire plans to build a new ‘signature’ restaurant in the hotel’s grounds and convert the existing Michelin-starred space into a brasserie. Chef Lisa Godwin Allen will oversee both, with the new restaurant offering her the opportunity to ‘reach her full potential’. As the hotel already offers an immersive chef’s table experience, I suspect the new place will go one step further, but detailed plans are yet to be announced. However, it all depends on the hotel finding a buyer. The current owners The Stafford Collection put the hotel on the market last autumn but the listing has subsequently been removed from Rightmove by the agent Savills and Northcote is not listed on their site either, so who knows what’s happening with it.

If that all sounds positive, it’s important to remember that the hospitality sector has continued to have its arse whipped relentlessly since covid. ‘A restaurant apocalypse is looming’ according to a recent headline in The Telegraph: ‘new tax hikes could be the tipping point which makes this the worst year for restaurants ever. . . with the cost of employing a full-time staff member on minimum wage set to rise by £2,367 to more than £24,800 per person.’ The Standard also recently reported that ‘One in 10 restaurants expected to close within a year’: ‘Roughly a fifth of all 50,900 UK restaurants surveyed by the accountancy firm Price Bailey had negative net assets on their balance sheets, while of the 10,000-plus already deemed “technically insolvent” more than half were placed in the “maximum risk” category by financial assessors.’ Locanda Locatelli in London is just the latest in a long line of high-profile closures. Who will be next?

But as one door closes another other opens. Unfortunately for the people of Brighton, that door will have ‘Burger & Lobster’ written above it. Yes, we poor provincials have ushered in the New Year with the less-than-thrilling news that we’re having a 14-year-old concept foisted upon us. There are more branches to come. I’ve never been to a Burger & Lobster, I never want to go to a Burger & Lobster and yet here we are with the prospect of Burger & Lobster once more proliferating across the earth. We must endure Burger & Lobster because Venture Capital commands it. Kneel to the boss. Happy New Year.

Epilogue

If this edition of Smashed has come across as even more dyspeptic than usual, I apologise. It’s the first thing I’ve written since getting over a very nasty Twixmas bout of norovirus and I’m still reacquainting myself with the idea that eating and drinking is a good thing to do rather than a potentially life-threatening one.

But the reality is that I already have four restaurants lined up for 2025 with many more to come, I’ve just started planning this year’s Brighton’s Best Restaurant Awards, I’ve contributed to a couple of other food-related Substacks (I’ll share links when the pieces are published) and collaborated on a feature with another Substacker that will see the light of day very soon. I have at least one chef interview for a future Smashed lined up with others on the horizon, so I’m starting the year in a very positive way, honest.

The norovirus also had its positives. The enforced extended period of sobriety doubtless did me some good. Being fit for just staring at my phone meant I not only had time to read loads of editions of the brilliantly funny Butt News (I particularly enjoyed Butt to the Future) but I also caught the new Bobby Fingers video which I would highly recommend. I also found out, which you probably know already, that Bobby Fingers is also Mr Chrome from The Rubberbandits. They went viral more than a decade ago and inspired fellow Irish hip-hop band Kneecap (there’s a movie about the band with Michael Fassbender) but I had never heard of them until now. I’m so cool. Although they are a comedy act, I think the music is great and their album ‘Serious About Men’ is well worth a listen. It’s NSFW, it’s not PC but it sure is funky now.

What’s all this got to do with restaurants you might be wondering? Nothing, just thought I’d share. I’m generous that way. (Ab)normal service will be resumed soon.