Five of this summer’s best retail and hospitality concepts, from the UK to Italy and beyond
Museum dining has been given a welcome revamp at London’s V&A East, while ‘romantic’ British fare is being imported to Mexico city.
Café Jikoni
London
Tucked within a concrete pleat of O’Donnell + Tuomey’s skirt-like V&E East building is a new restaurant with a recipe for improving museum cafés. Ravinder Bhogal and Nadeem Lalani Nanjuwany’s Café Jikoni borrows much from the invention and charm of its Marylebone original on Blandford Street, reimagined as an airy café with all-day appeal. Think baharat lamb sausage rolls, gooey cheese toasties with Goan pickle or made-to-order rigatoni with lentils and anchovies. It all fizzes with flavour and arrives flecked with unexpected scents or spices. This is culinary alchemy of the highest order.
“What has been interesting for us is how you bring true hospitality to a public institution and make it feel fresh,” says chef Bhogal. “That’s something that I am really proud of. Everything, from our bread and pickles to dessert, is made in-house from scratch.” So, how do you scale a beautiful, bijou restaurant to the appetites of museum visitors? And what if people don’t already know Jikoni? “We might not explain anything about ourselves if the person is coming in just to experience the museum,” says Nanjuwany. “They might just want a nice coffee.”
jikonilondon.com
ABC Zattere
Venice
This restaurant belongs to Scuola Piccola Zattere, a non-profit with a focus on contemporary arts. Based in Dorsoduro, it has a colourful graphic identity created by Milan’s Giga Design Studio that extends to the kitchen, designed by Milan- and Rotterdam-based Fosbury Architecture.
The food is overseen by chef and designer Nathan Cal Danby, while Fabio Cavallari and Bruno Pappalardo are in charge of the kitchen. Standout dishes include pancetta with goat’s cheese, sweet prunes and herb salsa verde and Treviso radicchio with fermented lemon cream, harissa and dark chocolate.
abczattere.com
The Lamb
Mexico City
Could you be tempted to choose British food in Mexico City? You might just be persuaded to do so at The Lamb, a new Roma Norte restaurant and the third project from Mexican restaurateur Federico Patiño and his Somerset-raised partner, Poppy Powell. The menu looks to the UK’s countryside: think Scotch eggs, Welsh rarebit, mackerel pâté and a rabbit pie. “I find British food romantic, raw and timeless,” says Patiño, whose proposition reads as a tribute to Powell and a cuisine with more depth than its fish-and-chips clichés might suggest. “In Mexico City, demand continues to rise yet the culinary offerings often feel repetitive.” The Lamb’s job, therefore, is to widen the city’s palate.
Tabasco 156, Roma Norte
The Florentin
Frankfurt
When Villa Kennedy closed in 2022, it sent a ripple through Frankfurt’s hotel scene. Now the 147-key property has returned as The Florentin. Guests pass through a scented lobby and a palm-lined passage to the courtyard at the heart of the property. “We applied the sense of tactility and calm that you would expect from a resort to a city hotel,” says designer Alicia Worthington of Singapore-based Unscripted.
At the bar, Maxim Kilian has craft-cocktail pedigree, while in The Dune, chef Niclas Nussbaumer adds Asian accents to French styles.
theflorentin.com
Haraiso
Zürich
Japanese concept shop Haraiso has returned to Zürich, this time in the heart of Wiedikon. The name comes from a Japanese twist on Portuguese word paraíso, meaning “paradise”.
Haraiso retains the charm that made its former Seefeld location a favourite with design aficionados. Shelves are lined with bamboo matcha whisks and heirloom-worthy kitchen pieces. A lower-level workshop space goes beyond retail, with a rotating programme focusing on Japanese craft skills, such as the art of repairing ceramics with lacquer and gold.
haraiso.ch
