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The first is to take advantage of the demand during the period leading up to Christmas and New Year, as an influx of business can make a significant dent in any new restaurant’s overdraft. The second is almost the opposite. Restaurant openings in November and December are often because a series of unforeseen delays have pushed back planned openings in June or September.

In all the major cities round the world today it is now becoming increasingly difficult to open a restaurant on time because the vital infrastructure is under such pressure. How to access the essential amenities is as big a challenge for restaurateurs as finding the right chefs. Hence the openings within six weeks of each other of The Luxe and La Chapelle in Spitalfields, which are only a stone’s throw away from one another except for the multi-storey office building in between them.

CAFE DE LUXE
109 Commercial Street, London E1, 020 7101 1751, theluxe.co.uk
Spitalfields has become a centre for good restaurants because landlords have welcomed them, and because the area nearby has become increasingly residential. It’s the perfect place for John Torode to open The Luxe. Torode first arrived in London in the early 1990s to cook at Mezzo in Soho. He subsequently went off to transform a former meat warehouse north of Smithfield Market into Smith’s of Smithfield, and became a judge on BBC’s MasterChef. But it demonstrates quite how difficult opening a restaurant has become today that, even with Torode’s experience, The Luxe is a year late.

But it is impressive. Located in the former flower market of what was the fruit and vegetable market that once covered this area, The Luxe incorporates a flower shop, a café on the ground floor that is open from early to late, a restaurant on the first floor and a music venue in the basement. Simply cooked, well-sourced ingredients make for a buzzing venue that belies its name.


GALVIN LA CHAPELLE
35 Spital Square, London E1, 020 7299 0400, galvinrestaurants.com
The plethora of good restaurants nearby forced brothers Chris and Jeff Galvin to amend the tone of La Chapelle, the café and restaurant they won the contest to open in a former church.
While one side of this £3m transformation concentrates on the classic French bistro dishes that have made their Bistrot de Luxe on Baker Street so popular, the other side has now become a more expensive restaurant.

This menu features such dishes as a terrine of leeks and foie gras, wood roasted sea bream and a banana and honeycomb soufflé. The wine list features 20 vintages of Hermitage La Chapelle, a famous, long-living red wine made by Paul Jaboulet Aîné in France, a wine that inspired the restaurant’s name.

MENNULA
10 Charlotte Street, London W1, 020 7636 2833, mennula.com
In the West End, chef Santino Busciglio, ex Number Twelve and Russell Norman, who opened The Ivy Club, have gone down less expensive routes to open their own restaurants, Mennula and Polpo, which respectively reveal the distinct charms of the food from the south and north of Italy.
Mennula is Sicilian for almond.

Busciglio was born in Sicily and grew up in Bolton, never losing his passion for Sicilian food. His new menu exudes the warmth of the Mediterranean: spaghetti with sardines and saffron, sea bass ravioli with razor clams, a Sicilian fish soup and almond milk ice cream.

POLPO
41 Beak Street, London W1, 020 7734 4479, polpo.co.uk
With Polpo, Norman has aimed to create something new for London but somewhere
that will be immediately recognisable to anyone who knows Venice well.

Polpo is the city’s first bacaro, a wine bar that serves a range of dishes from small chichete (pronounced chi-ke-tee), or mouth-sized portions of slices of bread topped with mortadella and walnuts, fig, prosciutto and mint or salt cod to plates of pork belly with hazelnuts, mussels and clams and fritto misto, shrimps and prawns quickly fried in fresh, clean batter.

A final veneer of authenticity is supplied by the blue plaque outside Polpo, which reveals that Canaletto, the painter of the most memorable Venetian scenes, once stayed here.

Nicholas Lander is restaurant critic of the Financial Times.