Bar Crispin is opening in Soho with 150 wines and black-garlic ice cream

Crispin is a nice little restaurant in Spitalfields: nice natural wine, nice small plates, you know the drill. 

Such niceness should be spread around, and Crispin’s owners Dominic Hamdy and Oliver Hiam know this all too well. So they’re now heading up West – don’t worry, the original location isn’t going anywhere – and sharing the niceness by opening a Soho spot.

Bar Crispin will fling open its Kingly Street doors on July 15, starting every day as a casual café at 9am, with pastries and Assembly Roast coffee on offer, before kicking off restaurant service from lunchtime through to dinner. Cosy but not poky, it’ll have three spaces, with room for 20 diners or drinkers in its main room, ten on the terrace and 12 in the subterranean ‘green room’.

Head chef Brendan Lee has been flung across the Atlantic to cook here, after stints at places like the Michelin-starred Al’s Place in San Francisco and Emmer & Rye in Austin, Texas. His bar snacks, small (and big!) plates, cheese and charcuterie look a delight: anchovy and potato focaccia with salsa verde, beef tartare with smoked egg yolk and black-garlic ice cream are eyeing us seductively from the launch menu. 

What with this being a wine bar, there’ll be an impressive wine list boasting 150 varieties, with a focus on independent producers and old-world and indigenous grape varietals. ‘We launched the Crispin Wine Club in late 2020, which has been a real hit with our customers, so it seems fair that our next site should continue this focus on the wine, particularly with the hire of our new GM Alex, who will also be sommelier at Bar Crispin, alongside a knockout food menu from new head chef Brendan, who’s just relocated back to London after years working at stand-out kitchens in California,’ says Hamdy.

Bar Crispin’s general manager and in-house sommelier Alex Price (formerly at Annabel’s and luxury hotel Beaverbrook) has worked alongside Crispin’s Stefano Cazzato on the wine list and will host regular events in the basement like tastings and food-and-wine pairings.

Welcome to Soho, Bar Crispin.

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