Wild Honey
The hit of 2006 was Arbutus, from chef Anthony Demetre and front-of-house head Will Smith, which turned out carefully sourced mod-Brit food at very reasonable rates, albeit in a featureless, harshly lit room. In Wild Honey, their summer ’07 opening, the duo have resolved the ambience problem with dark oak-paneled walls, contemporary canvases, slipper chairs, and banquettes while Frenchifying the menu in regional bistro fashion. Wines, as at Arbutus, are all offered by carafe as well as by bottle.
12 St. George St.
44-20/77-58-91-60

Canteen
When checking out the East End galleries or antiques-junk-fashion at the adjacent Spitalfields Market (best on Sun-days), this is the place to end up—or start off: Breakfast is served all day. Glass walls, central communal tables, and wooden booths create an effect more architect-chic than bleak, and the all-British cuisine (remember, Britain is now food obsessed) bears as much relation to canteen fare as Rembrandt does to street portraitists.
2 Crispin Pl.
Spitalfields
44-84/56-86-11-22

Wonder Bar
On the ground floor of trendy department store Selfridges, a dangerously irresistible wine-delivery method: the wine jukebox. After downloading cash to a smart card, you tour the 52 bottles, dispensing Petrus ($325 for a small glass) as if it were Diet Coke. With luck, the store will by now have won its bid to bring back the sample sip sizes ($65 for Petrus) deemed illegal by city council bureaucrats back in July. There’s food, too: shellfish, charcuterie, or cheese served on wooden boards.
Selfridges & Co.
400 Oxford St.
44-11/33-69-80-40

See:

Tate TV
The first all-art noncommercial digital channel is launching now, co-funded by the Arts Council, Channel 4, and the BBC. Watch its initial 30 hours of original content about Tate artists in your hotel room on www.tate.org.uk.

Louise Bourgeois
Just five years shy of 100, the great artist gets her first major U.K. retrospective since 1995, with 200 works in many mediums, at the Tate Modern, while over in the West End, new Bourgeois works, including six bronzes, are set off against the crimson silk walls of Hauser & Wirth Colnaghi.
Tate Modern
Bankside
44-20/78-87-88-88
www.tate.org.uk
Hauser & Wirth Colnaghi
15 Old Bond St.
44-20/73-99-97-70
www.hauserwirth.com

Southbank Centre
This summer, after endless renovations, the equally beloved and maligned Brutalist Thames-side arts center reopened amid much hoopla: Beethoven’s Ninth using Billy Bragg’s translation of Schiller’s text, 27 gamelan ensembles, and more. At the Royal Festival Hall, the resident London Philharmonic celebrates its 75th birthday on October 7 with new principal Vladimir Jurowski conducting a suitably populist program: Mozart’s Prague Symphony; Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 4, featuring pianist Maurizio Pollini; and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances. Then, on October 15 and 16, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, South Africa’s unofficial ambassadors and ever-popular masters of a cappella isicathamiya and mbube music, raise the new roof and counteract any art-pretension hangovers. In the smaller Queen Elizabeth Hall, period-instrument maverick Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment celebrates its 21st anniversary on October 13 and 14 with a fresh interpretation of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, the first great British opera.
Belvedere Rd.
44-87/16-63-25-00
www.southbankcentre.co.uk

Rivington Place
This not-to-be-missed visual arts center/gallery/exhibition space, dedicated to cross-cultural work outside the mainstream, is just opening. Among its many appealing virtues is the building itself, by “it” architect David
Adjaye (see the new Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, page 52).
6–8 Standard Place
Rivington St.
44-20/77-29-96-16
www.rivingtonplace.org

The Wellcome Collection
The Wellcome Trust, which funds research into human and animal health, opened this extraordinary space this summer. Quite possibly the world’s only museum dedicated to the human condition, it presents exhibits ranging from contemporary works exploring bodily issues to Napoleon’s toothbrush and a bronze Greco-Roman phallic amulet—the latter two are part of the collections compiled by the trust’s founder, the medically minded philanthropist-entrepreneur Sir Henry Wellcome (1853–1936).
183 Euston Rd.
44-20/76-11-22-22