Restaurant radar: the new openings to book now

Aptos opened in a renovated 19th-century church in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia in May. There, chef Justin James, formerly of Eleven Madison Park in New York, Vue de Monde in Melbourne and Restaurant Botanic in Adelaide, serves a 16-course tasting menu of native ingredients to just 14 diners per sitting, taking them on a gastronomic and short literal journey – the experience is enjoyed in different spaces, moving from the lounge to the library, to the kitchen to watch the chefs at work, to a higher floor for sweet treats. Abundant Australian art (the space used to be a gallery) and ceramics further cement the sense of place. 

_{Photo credit: Henry Trumble}

Gaggan Anand is a chef who’s not afraid to change things up, and so it is at his flagship, 15-cover Bangkok restaurant, where he has closed and reopened this month with a new menu and a very important new rule: no phones or cameras allowed for “most of the meal”. While the internet blinks in confusion, Anand has crafted a menu inspired by chakras – 25+ courses over three hours, accompanied, of course, by some of his favourite tunes (ain’t no party like a Gaggan party). If you want to get an idea of what he’ll be serving, head on over to his Instagram, where you can see the menu in sketch form; or don’t – letting it be a surprise seems in the spirit of things. Anand also has plans for a new restaurant in New Delhi, called Raga, in the coming months.

The tagline for Ninetta, a new Italian trattoria in Hong Kong from chef Antimo Merone (pictured far right with Graziano De Gregorio and head chef Marco Xodo) of Michelin-starred Estro, is “Italian food for everyone”. While details of the menu remain scant ahead of the restaurant’s opening in late June, you can expect pan-Italian cooking at an accessible price point – so think all your favourite antipasti, pastas, secondi and desserts. The vibe is definitely 1980s/90s, we’re told, in terms of the interior design and playlist. Other features include an open kitchen with a pasta-making station, which always transfixes, and an outdoor terrace. We think it sounds molto divertimento (a lot of fun).

Another reopening, this time for chef Vicky Lau. Her two-Michelin-star Tate Dining Room has been located on Hong Kong’s Hollywood Road since 2017, but on 27 June it will have its last dinner service before closing and reopening at a thus far undisclosed location later in the summer. Knowing Lau, you can be sure that Tate 3.0 (she opened the first iteration of the restaurant on Elgin Street in 2012) will be a timely evolution of her elegant French-Chinese concept – her seasonal tasting menus are currently ‘odes to’, with each course focusing on a different ingredient, such as blue lobster or hydrangea.