Recently in Selfridges Category

Restaurant charity StreetSmart has raised £455,000 during its 2009 Christmas campaign.

More than 550 restaurants in 18 cities throughout the UK took part in the annual fundraising campaign including those of Michelin-starred chefs such as Gordon Ramsay, Giorgio Locatelli, Tom Kitchin and Fergus Henderson.

The highest earners among the restaurants were Selfridges, Gordon Ramsay's Plane Food at Heathrow's T5, Harvey Nichols in Leeds and London and its OXO Tower restaurant, Maze, Joe Allen, Nobu, Smiths of Smithfield and Skylon.

StreetSmart raises money for the homeless by asking diners to add £1 to their bill. Sponsored by Deutsche Bank, which covers all of the charity's administration costs, all proceeds are used for projects supporting people back to employment and sustainable independent living.

Since its inception, StreetSmart has raised more than £4.2m to help the homeless.

The second London Restaurant Festival will run in the capital for two weeks in October.

The event was launched last year by the London Evening Standard's food critic Fay Maschler and Simon Davis, who together run restaurant consultancy Private View. It is a citywide celebration of dining out designed to raise the profile of restaurants involved and drive footfall.

Supported by Mayor of London Boris Johnson and tourism body Visit London, the 2010 London Restaurant Festival will run for two weeks from 4-18 October compared with six days last year. Restaurant operators in the capital can register to take part in the event by entering their details on its website.

Last year, the London Restaurant Festival attracted more than 500 operators and saw a myriad of events take place including the high profile pop up restaurant of iconic chef Pierre Koffmann on the roof of department store Selfridges, which ran for more than seven weeks.

A new gastropub in Oxford has Matthew Norman of The Guardian in raptures in this weekend's restaurant reviews. He declares that The Magdalen Arms could be used as "a teaching module for wannabe gastropub owners who think it can be done with half the flair and individuality of an Ikea flat pack".

Florence Fowler, who runs the front of house, and chef Tony Abarno have created what is probably the best eating place in Oxford, believes Norman.

Lisa Markwell, writing in The Independent on Sunday, is impressed by the food she is served at Bistro Bruno Loubet, which has opened at The Zetter hotel in East London, where Loubet has made a welcome return from Australia to the capital's restaurant scene.
 
To quote another chef, Markwell says Loubet is a "rock god" because of his brilliance with flavours. Almost every aspect of her meal is faultless from her starter of skate to a chocolate dessert which she describes as the best she's eaten in recent memory.
 
A fish restaurant in Ramsgate, Kent - Eddie Gilbert's - is highly recommended by Jay Rayner of The Observer. As well as serving simple dishes very well such as fish and chips, fish cakes and bowls of shell-on-prawns by the half pint, there are many more ambitious dishes which are also impressive. 

The food enjoyed by Rayner includes vodka and beetroot cured smoked salmon, monkfish with gem lettuce and parmesan and white chocolate fondant.

In Time Out, Guy Dimond reviews Mark Hix move into retail catering with Hix at Selfridges, London. In comparison to Hix in Soho, Dimond declares the Selfridges eaterie to be the diffusion line "the T-shirt bearing the logo, rather than then tailor-made suit, and poor value when compared to the real couture".

However, he does find it to be a cool place to people watch, despite the steep prices and the indifferent service.

Selfridges is planning a permanent restaurant on the roof of its London department store following the massive success of Pierre Koffmann's pop-up restaurant.

The iconic store on Oxford Street has revealed it is looking for a chef to head up the potential venture.

Koffmann, the former three-Michelin-starred chef patron of the famous La Tante Claire restaurant, was initially scheduled to run his temporary eaterie for one week as part of the London Restaurant Festival. But it was extended for 39 days following the huge number of requests for bookings. 

Selfridges food and restaurants director Ewan Venters said demand far exceeded expectations, with the restaurant catering for 8,000 diners in total.

"We created an environment that equalled the quality of food produced by Koffmann, which led to so many guests say that we ought to have a permanent feature on the roof of Selfridges," he said.

"So much so that the search has begun to find the right chef and concept for a future project, whatever that might look like."