Media Partners
Meet our project partners who are passionate about preserving and documenting the culture of London restaurants and continue to support our initiative.
The Evening Standard
Over the past decades, the Evening Standard has consistently offered comprehensive coverage of London's vibrant restaurant industry, chronicling its evolution, highlighting emerging culinary trends, profiling notable chefs, and reviewing new establishments. The newspaper has addressed challenges faced by restaurateurs, from economic downturns to recent pandemic-related impacts. Overall, the Evening Standard has been an essential platform for the capital's culinary scene, both celebrating its successes and addressing its challenges.
The Balvenie
Nestled in the picturesque surroundings of Dufftown, Speyside, The Balvenie distillery has been making whisky for more than 125 years. Nowhere else can you find a distillery that grows its own barley, malts in its own traditional floor maltings, and still employs a team of coopers to tend to the casks alongside a coppersmith to maintain the stills.
With a team committed to ultimate craftsmanship, their dedicated characters pour their soul and obsession into every single bottle, whilst Malt Master Kelsey McKechnie presides over the all-important maturation process. This demonstrates that while it takes skill to make something great, it takes true heart to make it extraordinary.
Founded in 1892 by William Grant, The Balvenie Single Malt Scotch Whisky is produced by William Grant & Sons Ltd, an award-winning independent family-owned distiller and today run by his direct descendants. Each expression has a very individual taste, rich, luxuriously smooth, and underpinned by the distinctively honeyed character of The Balvenie.
Apparel Partner:
Thomas Pink
Back in 1984, at exactly the time when London’s culinary revolution was sowing its seeds, three Irish brothers decided to take on the British shirt making establishment and launch a bold alternative. Thomas Pink may have been named after a Mayfair tailor of the 18th century, but the concept was thoroughly modern. The shirts were not just characterised by their striking colours and stripes, but also by the two pink tabs on either side that reinforced the gussets, a branding detail that one of the founders said he had seen wearers display by pulling their shirts out in company. Today Thomas Pink is a luxury British shirt maker, has a store on Jermyn Street and still dresses professionals, as it did in the ‘80s, though its collection now reflects a broader definition of that term – positioning the shirt as the ubiquitous garment for both financier and musician, architect and artist. And, of course, diners, restaurateurs and chefs. As well as classic cotton shirts – still in a broad range of stripes and colours – there are also more casual linen shirts, chambray shirts, and polo shirts woven from mercerised Egyptian cotton.
Thomas Pink is proud to support the Celebrate London Restaurants campaign.
Dr Christina Makris
Dr Christina Makris is a writer, lecturer, and cultural commentator. She is the author of Aesthetic Dining: The Art Restaurant Around the World (2021), the first book ever to guide readers through the “Art Restaurant”—a place where food and aesthetics meet in restaurants and dining spaces, as well as collaborations between artists and chefs. Christina has been involved in the arts as a collector, a philanthropist, and patron of cultural institutions. And she has been involved with restaurants and as an investor, consultant, and sybarite. She currently works with brands and hospitality to integrate culture and the arts though partnerships to deepen client experience. Having recently finished WSET 3, she’s been writing a monthly wine column for Apollo art magazine, and is completing a new book on art and wine. But before all these things, she was a restaurant brat, whose family were in the hospitality industry, so she believes in the idea that restaurants are cultural spaces.
Laurence Hamdan
Laurence comes from a background in chemistry, but his first love was food. He has masters degrees in chemistry, and in Culinary Arts from the Slow Food University in Italy (UNISG). He has worked in kitchens since he was 15, and has staged at Noma and St John. Laurence has been broadening his knowledge of sustainability within F&B after studying at MAD in Copenhagen. He now works now as a consultant at the Sustainable Restaurant Association and helps restaurants improve the sustainability of their operations and the environmental/social impact of their menus.
Dylan Jones, Editor-In-Chief, The Evening Standard
“London, with its sprawling restaurant scene, is as much a feast for the mind as for the palate, and there’s no other city in the world where you encounter tradition and innovation on this scale. The Art of Dining: Celebrate London Restaurants campaign aims to shine a spotlight on the city's storied restaurant heritage, its independent chef-patrons, and their influence on the new generation of chefs and hospitality professionals”