The Counter: The Restaurants That Will Define This Autumn

The Counter is a weekly column from award-winning restaurant writer and broadcaster Jimi Famurewa. Sign up to get The Counter first, sent to your inbox every Wednesday.

It’s started hasn’t it? We have officially reached that point in late August when there is a palpable online tussle between those desperate for bejumpered walks in cooler temperatures and those already pre-grieving a lost life of billowy shorts, lido dips and emergency Soleros.

I am not here to pick a side (I both really enjoy roaring log fires and find performative autumn-lust a bit annoying). But I think that, one thing we can all unitedly get excited about, is the commencement of what has always traditionally been the restaurant world’s equivalent of blockbuster season. Sertaç Dirik and David Carter’s fire-breathing exploration of nostalgic Anatolian cuisine. The UK debut of a Parisian lobster roll hype-magnet. Lots and lots of pubs, and a high altitude, unexpectedly intimate return for Florence Knight.

All this and much more awaits in the next few months, as September drifts into October. Consider this your cheat sheet, starter’s pistol and seasonal gloom-buster; a bumper crop of restaurant openings that I think are going to define the coming weeks and, perhaps, turn even the most ardent summer person into a card-carrying autumn ultra.

What might it look like if the excitement, acclaim and timely sense of cultural reappraisal harnessed by Oma, Impala and Kismet were combined into one monstrously hyped package? Kid might be about to give us our answer. Mangal II chef Sertaç Dirik and Bajan hospitality midas David Carter’s imminent modern Turkish grill (which opens in Soho next week) feels like it encapsulates a moment of sustained breakthrough for broadly Anatolian cuisine, rendered with both modern verve and homestyle nostalgia. But beyond the familiarity of the genre, I’d expect this spot – with its coal-fired XL scallops, braised kid goat dishes and cherry and pecan baklava – to bring plenty of new elements to the pide-piled table. Elsewhere, though Barang’s planned permanent move to Soho is no longer happening (I’d move this one to the “indefinitely on ice” category), Hasan Semay’s yet-to-be-named overhaul of a north London chippie/kebab shop and Soraya (basically Berenjak for Alo-wearing Lagana girlies) will keep the home fires burning.

I regret to inform you that you’re about to see a lot of tiny-mic video reviewers come-with-meeeee-ing into the very busy frozen yoghurt/lobster roll/caesar wrap place and telling you whether they think it's worthy of all the fuss. Yes, Yo-Chi – the canny, millennial-repelling Australian fro-yo spot – may have already opened to predictable bedlam in Notting Hill, but its arrival looks like the harbinger of a return towards the kind of fast-casual hypestorms not seen for a few years. Czer Soho’s densely packed chopped salad wraps. Homer Lobster’s combination of satisfying, marie rose-dolloped crustacea and expert branding. Even Five Feet’s notably “de-regionalised” pan pizza. Expect all of them to spark debate for weeks at a time. Yet hold in your heart the fact that it’s absolutely fine for younger people to get excited about something that isn’t necessarily for you.

It’s our prerogative as Londoners to get defensive if outsiders point out, very gently, that our version of a particular foodstuff is laughably rubbish. So maybe it’s collective progress that Saltwater – a truly exceptional, Australian-owned grab-and-go spot that is like one long, delicious riposte to the fridge-cold misery of the UK’s fast-casual sushi scene – has been so excitedly embraced. Even more impressively, it joins the wider hand roll boom, plus the likes of Notting Hill’s Nakimushi (the Dorian team’s twin-pack ramen shop and Japanese bistro) and Sumi Marylebone as part of a city-wide shift towards exceptional, omakase-adjacent cooking at a variety of price points and without the requisite air of exorbitant exclusivity.

You may well have noticed that a separate project over the summer gave me cause to identify and explore a new micro-scene that we might call New British Nostalgia: compact, soulful yet gastronomically serious cafe-bistros exploring old-school regional recipes in the manner of places like Bara and Inis. I really think that unapologetically comforting, yet highly progressive hubs of potato scallops with curry sauce and dank slabs of bara brith are on the rise. And the arrival of both Quince founder Anna Higham’s spin off cafe Clementine (hello tattie scones and new wave ploughman’s) and Norman’s co-founder Elliot Kaye’s Marrion’s is only going to bolster the nascent scene.

Not sure if you’ve noticed guys but, erm, people really, really like pubs? That seems to have been a rough version of the conversation that has occurred at a number of upwardly mobile hospitality groups and resulted in an autumnal bounty of dining-forward modern hostelries, predominantly located in the blast radius of the City of London. Cloth at Cornhill’s rabidly anticipated overhaul of Simpson’s Tavern. Public House Group’s reportedly seafood-heavy Clerkenwell debut The Horses. Island’s reappearance in an upstairs dining room at The George and Dragon (in Clerkenwell again) plus big-ticket dayboat fish and pints at The Albatross. Personally, I’m especially intrigued by Andrew Wong’s Chinese-inflected boozer Kong and Seouls of Mischief’s forthcoming Jenga tower of cultural influences (Mexican, Korean, American) at Homerton’s Adam and Eve: unexpected culinary concepts pushing at the limits of what can work within the approachable frame of a pub.

It’s interesting that, having first made her name with Polpetto’s tiny pop-up above The French House, Sessions Arts Club’s Florence Knight is kind of going back to her roots. Perched up on the 11th floor eyrie of Nick Jones’s new St Clement hotel, her comeback project Lunette is intimate; like, 30-or-so covers mostly arrayed around a central communal table intimate. The sophisticated nexus between a seasonality driven chef’s table and boujee art world dinner party – likely dishes on the four- or eight-course set menu include eel pomme souffle and chocolate custard cake – isn’t limited to 180 Thames. Waterhouse in Shoreditch has just commenced serving an earthy Northumbrian-inspired menu to just 24 guests per sitting, and Endo and Moga, Endo Kazutoshi’s phoenix from the flames in Chelsea, will seat just 10. Call it enforced scarcity or a response to the access economy. Just don’t be surprised if you have to get up close and personal with your fellow diners.