NEW OPENING: SOL’S

This July, the team behind Margate's Fort Road Hotel and London’s Foreign Exchange News coffee shop will open Sol’s, a wine bar and delicatessen inspired by the food and drink of the Iberian peninsula. By day, Sol’s will be a shop, selling sandwiches and salads to eat in or take away, as well as a selection of seasonal produce, cheese, charcuterie, pantry goods and wine. By night, those wines will be poured alongside a regularly changing menu of small plates which champion the season's best ingredients.

Influenced by the conviviality of southern European dining, the menu at Sol’s will reimagine British seasonal produce through an Atlantic and Mediterranean lens.

Sol’s is the brainchild of Gabriel Chipperfield, founder of London-based Wendover Partners, an integrated design and development studio that sources, designs and develops remarkable properties throughout London and internationally. As well as Fort Road Hotel, Chipperfield and his partners are behind Shreeji News, a sleek newsagent on Marylebone’s fashionable Chiltern Street, as well as Foreign Exchange News, a coffee shop, newsagent and bureau de change just three doors down from Sol’s on the white-washed street of Leinster Terrace. Both sit opposite Leinster House – a residential development of nine apartments which Wendover will launch in late 2025, and all just a stone’s throw from other Bayswater newcomers, Jeremy King’s The Park and the Whiteley’s re-development.

Of the area, Gabriel says: “I walked down Leinster Terrace every day as a child and, unlike much of London, it hasn’t changed much. Sol’s is one piece of a now rapidly changing Bayswater that I hope will give residents and visitors the high quality food and drink amenities they want and need.”

Inspired by the simple Spanish canteens near his family’s home in Galicia, Gabriel set out to create “a resource for the neighbourhood – a place people can go and buy essentials any time, to pick up a picnic for the park, or stay for a meal with delicious wine by night.” As always at Wendover, he started with design – a long, central table, a fragmented travertine floor, bottle green tiles hand-made in Portugal – then worked with friend, food and wine journalist Mina Holland, to realise the concept, with produce and products from suppliers such as Shrub and Provisions. “I don’t think anyone with a background in hospitality would’ve started with a long central table,” says Gabriel, “but when was a big table ever a bad idea? For thousands of years, people have gravitated towards a table in the middle of a room.”

Chef-patron Harry Farrow draws on his time at La Mercerie in Marseille and Leone in Nimes, combined with influences from his native Norfolk, where he ran a group of coastal pubs and then Siding, a popular restaurant within a cult bakery. Of Sol’s, Harry says, “I want to use my roots as a publican combined with my experience in the Mediterranean to provide a neighbourhood eatery with provisions, wine and a sense of community, working as directly as possible with producers to maintain a sustainable and fair food system.” He adds, “Cooking in the south of France over the last year, I swapped butter for olive oil, crab for tuna, ale for rosé, and casseroles for couscous – but at Sol’s I am excited to unite those influences.” Mina’s list of low-intervention wines from some of her favourite European regions – from Burgundy to Roussillon, Abruzzo to Emilia-Romagna, Macedonia to Catalunya – has been designed to complement Harry’s salty snacks and seasonal dishes cooked with a light touch.

From noon, the central table will be home to piles of abundant salads and sandwiches filled with the likes of Courgettes, stracciatella and mint, or Jambon de Paris with dijonnaise and cornichons, made with St. JOHN focaccia, which will segue into Mediterranean small plates from 5pm. Snacks that sing with wine, such as Gildas, canned fish from Portugal, and crispy Deep-fried panisse with aioli will be served, alongside sharing plates, including Mozzarella with griddled peach, basil and pine nuts, Mortadella with giardiniera pickles; Cuore del Vesuvio tomatoes and fresh borlotti beans, a classic Tortilla de patatas, and Papas asadas (roast potatoes) served with piquant mojo verde. Cheese plates, charcuterie and Toklas sourdough will be a mainstay, as will Vanilla ice-cream topped with De Fermo olive oil (from one of Sol’s favourite winemakers) and flaky salt, also Polenta cake with a seasonally-changing accompaniment – think roast plums in August and blood oranges in January.

The deli will initially open 5 days a week, with a view to becoming a 7-day shop; dinner will be Weds-Sun with an earlier close on Sundays. Private dining/events will be available 7-days a week, and the team plan to hold regular public events, tastings and chef collaborations. With time, Wendover and Farrow’s goal is to continue to breathe new life into Leinster Terrace, with Sol’s as a beloved neighbourhood mainstay. In fact, Chipperfield and company are already underway on another concept on the street, and expect to launch it later in 2024. Bayswater’s revival is now well on its way.

For more information please contact jessica@gemmabellandcompany.com.