Is London Having Its Euro Summer Moment?
Our Head of Restaurants, Shyna Melwani explores how London's most exciting summer openings are borrowing the heat, hedonism, and effortless excess of Europe's most iconic destinations and why this summer, you might not need to leave the city at all.
The Article
There’s something about London in the summer that feels almost transportive. The city softens. Days stretch into golden evenings, terraces spill onto pavements, and suddenly, no one wants to go home. For a few fleeting months, if we are lucky, London stops behaving like London and starts to feel like the Mediterranean.
London isn't just borrowing the energy of Ibiza or Mykonos, it's recreating it.
This year, that feeling isn’t accidental. It’s curated. With a wave of European hotspots opening their doors in the capital, London isn’t just borrowing the energy of Ibiza or Mykonos, it’s recreating it.
Take Nammos London, the Mayfair outpost of the iconic Mykonos beach club. Known for its sun-drenched lunches that blur seamlessly into champagne-fuelled evenings, Nammos has built its reputation on excess, escapism, and atmosphere. Its arrival signals a shift in London dining: less about quiet refinement, more about experience. Expect long, indulgent lunches, late-night dinners, DJs on rotation, and a crowd dressed as though they could be anywhere but the UK.
Then there’s Jul’s, fresh from Ibiza and already establishing itself as one of the city’s most high-energy openings. Far from intimate, the space is expansive and immersive, designed for late-night dining that leans into scale and spectacle. With its underground bar, in-house cocktail lab, and a soundtrack rooted in Balearic energy, Jul’s delivers a full-sensory experience. When I visited, the eclectic mix of flavours, music, and atmosphere made it easy to forget the city outside–it felt closer to the beach than central London.
What ties these openings together is a noticeable shift in how London wants to dine this summer. For years, the city has championed small plates, carefully curated, endlessly shareable, but often restrained. Now, the mood is more generous. Large-format dishes, family-style sharing, tables filled to excess. It’s less about tasting and more about feasting. Less minimal, more hedonistic. In other words, it’s very European.
So, is London becoming Ibiza? Mykonos? Not quite. But it’s closer than ever to capturing that feeling–the spontaneity, the energy, the sense that the night could go anywhere. And for those not boarding a plane this summer, that might be exactly the point.
