September is a good month to be eating in London. The city is back in full swing, the diary is filling up again and, conveniently, there’s a whole new crop of places to put in it. After the slightly looser pace of summer, this month brings a noticeable shift in the restaurant scene: chefs return with new projects, long-rumoured openings finally materialise and some of London’s most familiar names turn up in entirely new corners of the city.
This month has a particularly good mix of them. There are big-name chefs taking on new kitchens, neighbourhood restaurants with plenty to prove and a few openings that have been keeping the food crowd guessing for months. From Soho to St James’s, Mayfair to Kentish Town, these are the restaurants and bars giving us a reason to change our usual plans this September.
The Pem – St. James’s
Chef Romy Gill MBE returns to a permanent kitchen on 18 September for the first time in six years, taking over The Pem at Conrad London St. James with a menu moving through the regional flavours of Punjab, Kerala and Bengal, and plated for sharing. Signatures include a slow-cooked butter chicken, samosa chaat pulled from her own childhood street food memories, hand-dived scallops with raw mango and date-tamarind, and slow-braised lamb with Kashmiri morels; dessert runs to a rose and pistachio cake and a saffron and black cardamom poached pear.
Drinks follow the same route, spice-forward throughout: an Amrut Indian single malt old fashioned with cardamom bitters, a pomegranate negroni with cinnamon, and single-estate teas from Anandini in Himachal Pradesh. Many of the spice blends are Gill’s own, and ingredients are sourced from British and women-led producers, including Jess’s Ladies Organic Farm in Gloucestershire.
Where: 22-28 Broadway, London SW1H 0BH
When: Opens Friday 18 September 2026
More info: romygillatthepem.com
KID – Soho
Soho’s next big opening comes from a name Mangal II regulars will know well: Sertaç Dirik, who spent the last few years turning his family’s ocakbaşı into one of the country’s most acclaimed Turkish restaurants, is going out on his own. KID, opening on the corner of Frith and Bateman Street this September, pairs him with restaurateur David Carter – the man behind OMA, AGORA, SMOKESTAK and Manteca – and pulls its cooking from Central Anatolia, where Dirik’s family is from and where he first learned the techniques on the menu, at his father’s restaurant back in 1994.
Bread comes first, as it should on a Turkish table: tombik pide from the wood-fired oven, sourdough pide off the mangal, both brushed with kaymak butter while still warm. From there it’s meze built for sharing – house-made çökelek cheese with summer peas, sivri peppers buried under shavings of kashkaval aged in Kars – before things move to the grill and the tandır.
The space includes terracotta banquettes, a grill counter you can watch from, a wine room that doubles as private dining, and a bakery tucked into the basement.
Where: 55 Frith Street, Soho, London W1D 4SJ
When: 1 September
More info: kid.london
The Shepherd Mayfair – Mayfair
Shepherd Market, a small precinct in Mayfair, gets its first proper hotel opening in September, when The Shepherd Mayfair unveils 82 rooms and suites across six floors of a converted townhouse, from £600 a night.
The rooms follow the building’s original proportions, so several come with window seats overlooking the market. Furniture works overtime throughout: desks convert into dressing tables with a hidden safe built in, console tables flip into chessboards, and bathrooms are marble with Floris amenities made exclusively for the hotel. Corridors double as a gallery, hung with photography by Jack English (much of it never exhibited before) and George McLeod.
Downstairs, the hotel’s food and drink offering centres on Fayre, a 62-cover restaurant doing breakfast, lunch and dinner — think lobster and prawn brioche rolls, braised beef short rib croquettes and a beef Wellington pithivier, in a room done out in dark timber panelling and berry tones. There’s also Teddy’s, a speakeasy cocktail bar tucked beneath the hotel for something later and darker.
Where: 2 Stanhope Row, London W1J 7BS
When: Opens September 2026; rooms from £600/night
More info: theshepherdmayfair.com
Georgie’s Bar at Kerridge’s – Embankment
Tom Kerridge is reopening his Corinthia London restaurant, eight years after it first launched, with a new bar attached: Georgie’s, named for his late Boxer, whose paw print was pressed into the concrete floor at The Hand & Flowers and has stuck around as the brand’s emblem ever since. The two spaces have swapped roles — Georgie’s is now the bigger, more prominent draw, while Kerridge’s moves behind a velvet partition into a more intimate 57-cover room, still led by Head Chef Tom Childs.
Kerridge’s keeps its signatures — whole Cornish lobster thermidor, a venison bun with matson curry sauce, and the Chef’s Larder, where you pick your cut before it hits the fire. Next door, Georgie’s runs on a Martini club — Dry, Wet, Dirty and a Steak, a Gibson finished with a house-smoked pickled onion — poured straight from the freezer, alongside a bar menu built for drinking: buttermilk fried chicken, a BBQ brisket cheeseburger, haddock fritters with matson sauce.
Where: 10 Northumberland Avenue, London WC2N 5AE
When: Opens Saturday 5 September 2026
More info: corinthia.com/london/kerridges/georgies-bar/
Soraya – Marylebone
The Pachamama Group opens Soraya at the Loxton Walk development on Baker Street this September – their largest London site to date, with room for close to 200 diners. The Persian restaurant originally launched in Abu Dhabi, and joins the group’s existing portfolio, which includes Zephyr, Lagana and Nina. Despite the scale, the space is split into interconnected areas, including an open kitchen, bar and two private dining rooms.
Breakfast includes Persian omelettes, eggs Benedict with saffron hollandaise and warm khachapuri pide. The main menu features flatbreads, smoked aubergine kashk bademjan and short rib khoresh with sour grape, alongside kebabs — lamb koobideh, chicken joujeh — and larger dishes like butterflied sea bass finished with herbs and lemon. Dessert runs on a rotating series of cheesecakes.
When: September (date TBC)
Where: 96 George Street, London W1U 8AF
More info: @sorayamarylebone
Bunso – Kentish Town
Omar Shah, of Belly acclaim, is opening a second Kentish Town restaurant this September under his Maginhawa Group: Bunso, an all-day spot that flips from bakery to pizzeria as the day goes on, both sides built around Filipino flavours. Mornings bring laminated pastries, savoury bakes and coffee; by evening it’s pizza alongside a short menu of crudo, kinilaw, salads and pasta – though exact dishes are still under wraps ahead of opening.
It’s taking over the old hair and beauty academy on Hawley Road, stripped back for a full makeover. Shah calls it his most personal opening yet, saying the Filipino-Italian combination “doesn’t come from us sitting down and deciding to put different cuisines together — it’s the food I grew up around.”
Where: 1A Hawley Rd, London NW1 8RP
When: Opens September 2026
More info: @bybunso
Bamboo Mat – Canary Wharf
Nikkei restaurant Bamboo Mat is doubling up with a third site in Canary Wharf this September, after Denis Gobjila and Victor Rosca — who met working together at Chotto Matte before striking out on their own — built a following first in Leyton, then a bigger follow-up in Stratford’s East Village. Grace Dent reviewed the original for the Guardian and landed on a comparison to “a smaller, cheaper and better Chotto Matte”, which gives a decent sense of the pitch: a Japanese-Peruvian menu built around ceviche deluxe with sea bass, scallop and tiger’s milk, ox cheek with yuzu potato puree and teriyaki sauce, a strong sushi selection, and a tonka bean crème brûlée to close. Cocktails lean the same way, pisco sour included.
Each site has scaled up on the last – Leyton to Stratford’s 68 covers and a terrace, and now Canary Wharf goes bigger again, spread across two floors with a raw bar and cocktail bar on the ground level, and a robata grill and main kitchen upstairs.
Where: 1 North Street, Canary Wharf E14 3AD
When: Opens September 2026
More info: bamboo-mat.co.uk
The Prince Arthur – Chelsea
The Prince Arthur is relocating wholesale from Belgravia to Chelsea this September, swapping pub status for a restaurant and bar. The move solves a problem the original site never could: Belgravia’s extraction setup meant no live charcoal, awkward for a kitchen built around Basque cooking. The new space, taking over from the short-lived Kino near Daphne’s, puts the kitchen front and centre with a fire right in the middle of the room, Head Chef Adam Iglesias’ cooking on full display.
Downstairs is the restaurant; upstairs is the new Chelsea Music Bar, a late-licence spot inspired by Tokyo’s listening bars. It’s the same team’s second go at Chelsea after Arthur’s Market, ASA and Salvador folded within six months – though this time they’re leading with something that already has a following, having built a name for Basque food and its own-brand caviar in Belgravia.
Where: 96 Draycott Ave, London SW3 3AD
When: Opens September 2026
More info: princearthurbelgravia.co.uk
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