The Battle to Keep London Restaurants Great

More than 250 new restaurants opened in London this year, according to a running list of scheduled debuts by the independent restaurant news site Hot Dinners. Shoreditch has replaced its hipsterish appeal with savory new tenancies by the likes of Legado — a more opulent incarnation of Nieves Barragan’s Sabor just off Regent Street; meanwhile, exhausted spaces in tourist-mobbed Borough Market have been resurrected by projects like Barang, chef Tom Geoffrey’s take on Khmer cuisine. Even much-snubbed South London got Norbert’s, a rapturously good rotisserie chicken haven run by veterans from the city center. In April, The Standard declared that “London has the dining out malarkey just so… the moment’s perfect as it is.”

David Ellis, the paper’s restaurant critic, counseled his readers to seize the moment because such things can and will pass. But it seems to be continuing — to the delight of chefs and their accountants. Diners are piling on, ignoring the dismal UK economy and the government’s omnishambles. As my Bloomberg colleague Kate Krader wrote earlier this month: “Despite dreary budget news, dining rooms around the city, especially at higher-profile places, are seeing an increase in holiday bookings from last year.”