A new “maverick British restaurant” is to open at the upcoming Six Senses hotel in London in March, the Standard can reveal.
Called Whiteley’s Kitchen, Bar & Café, the restaurant will take a “vegetable-forward approach to modern British cuisine” and is to be “informed by the Anglo-Celtic calendar”.
The venue will be divided into a bar, cafe space, dining room and courtyard, across the ground floor of the new Six Senses building near Bayswater, a multi-million pound hotel in the former Whiteley’s department store.
Eliano Crespi, a long-time chef at five-star hotels, has been appointed executive chef at the restaurant, while Jose Jara, formerly of the Art’otel in Battersea, will run the kitchen day-to-day.
The menu is to include dishes such as grilled Suffolk pork with shio koji and mustard jus; gnocchi with cavolo nero, Stilton, and toasted English walnuts; and salt-baked English pears served with rooibos-infused crème légère.
Fermentation will be a key aspect of the kitchen and will be led by Jelena Belgrave, whose practice is influenced by Balkan traditions and Japanese macrobiotics.
Drinks will be overseen by bar director Adrian Gonzalez Parrondo, whose drinks have been designed to work with or without alcohol.
A signature cocktail, Clouds Over Islay, will combine Bruichladdich with amazake (a fermented Japanese rice drink) soda and lemon hydrosol.
As for the café, there’ll be coffee, freshly baked breads and viennoiserie, all made in-house using British organic regenerative flour, all overseen by bakery chef Samuel November and head baker Sebastien Chiono.
Whiteley’s will launch on March 1 in tandem with the new Six Senses hotel. Whiteley’s department store was founded in west London by William Whiteley in 1863, and was once a major retailer alongside the likes of Harrods, Selfridge’s, and Liberty. It closed in 2018.
149 Queensway, W2 4YN, sixsenses.com
