Need to know London Life

My plate of view Kuro Eatery, 5, Hillgate Street, W8

Meandering paths invite you to linger, tactile terrazzo steps call out to be touched or sat upon and a subtle water feature, trickling down the steps to form a series of natural pools, offers refreshment, reflections and a sense of fun.

Some 14,000 plants totalling more than 140 different species provide a significant biodiversity uplift, too. Go now for alliums, the flattened umbels of Baltic parsley and the elegant spires of foxgloves.

Natasha Goodfellow is the author of ‘A London Floral’ and ‘A Cotswold Garden Companion’ (www.finchpublishing.co.uk) officials receiving tea cargos had a basic grasp of the Chinese language. Chinese sailors were some of the first people from their country to settle in London and Limehouse became Europe’s first Chinatown • Although the term Cockney typically refers to a person from the East End or born within earshot of the church bells of St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside, it is also a recognised dialect of the English language. Cockney rhyming slang originated in the 1840s, as a way for people to communicate with one another without passers-by and the police being able to understand

In my other life, I’m an author of romantic comedies, so the first thing that pops into my head when somebody says ‘Notting Hill’ to me is Hugh Grant blushing in a bookshop. The second is Bridget Jones convening love-life crisis summits with Shazza and Jude at 192, a real-life restaurant on Kensington Park Road that put W11 on the gastronomic map. It closed in 2004, so, between then and 2019, Notting Hill (like Hampstead, bafflingly) wasn’t really somewhere you’d make a special trip to for dinner, barring a booking at The Ledbury. That changed when Jackson Boxer’s homage to the Hebrides, Orasay, opened. Then came Caia, Dorian, The Counter, Akub, The Butter Club, Straker’s… Barely a week seems to go by without a press release about another new opening materialising in my inbox. Most of these are to the north of W11, clustered on and around Golborne Road. But one really notable exception is in the opposite direction, just south of Notting Hill Gate Tube station: Kuro Eatery.

I arrive for dinner with a friend who also writes romantic comedies and, looking out at the sun setting over the magnolialined terraces, we mistily agree that it feels like rewinding to 1999. But there’s nothing backward-looking about Kuro’s wine list, which furnishes us with glasses of a fantastically crunchy Georgian orange, or the main menu, which moves between Mediterranean and minimalist with a generous pinch of Japanese influence. There’s cod ‘ham’ with early harvest olive oil, lamb yakitori with truffle and mint and furikake-dusted tenderstem broccoli. The dish of the night for us is a flatbread so light it’s practically levitating, topped with goat’s cheese and fermented hot honey, tear-andshare taken to a whole new level.

The puddings (chocolate mousse, a clever and nostalgic banana-shaped banana pudding) lend themselves to two spoons. Everything apart from them comes to the table when it’s ready, which normally irritates me a bit, but, here, it works; it means the conversation flows around the food, rather than being brought to a halt by it. Perfect if you’re setting the world to rights—or convening a crisis summit about your love life.

Emma Hughes