Joël Antunès to launch Provencal restaurant at Embassy Mayfair

French chef Joël Antunès is launching a Provençal restaurant at Embassy Mayfair next month.

The former Michelin-starred chef, who returned to London last year to join the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge hotel as executive chef, will open the new 95-seat Kitchen Joël Antunès in early November. He will continue to work with Park Plaza on a consultancy basis to oversee Brasserie Joël.

For the new restaurant Antunès has teamed up with Dan Kapp, Jacobi Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe and Timo Weber as well as Embassy Mayfair owner Mark Fuller.

The menu will showcase Provençal dishes and ingredients such as a traditional niçoise salad, octopus salad with caponata, sweetbreads with porcini, and roast sea bass with lemon. Prices will range from £32 to £60 for three courses.

Embassy Mayfair is currently undergoing a refurbishment and on reopening Kitchen Joël Antunès will feature interiors inspired by 1950s and 1960s Riviera glamour.

Details will include a French patterned limestone tile floor as well as a marble-topped bar, with banquette seating, chairs and bar stools covered in leather in shades of duck egg blue, Burgundy and Champagne.

Born in Volvic, France, Antunès worked in London between 1991 and 1996 as chef-partner at the former Michelin-starred restaurant Les Saveurs in Mayfair.

He then moved to the USA where he launched his eponymous Joël Restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as holding executive chef positions with the Ritz Carlton Dining Room in the city and the Oak Room at the Plaza in New York. He returned to London after a decade abroad last year.

Joël Antunes returns to London as executive chef at Park Plaza Westminster Bridge >>

Menuwatch Brasserie Joël >>

By Kerstin Kühn

E-mail your comments to Kerstin Kühn here.

If you have something to say on this story or anything else join the debate at Table Talk - Caterer's new networking forum. Go to www.catererandhotelkeeper.com/tabletalk

Catererandhotelkeeper.com jobs

Looking for a new job? Find your next job here with Catererandhotelkeeper.com jobs