Wolseley Hospitality Group has confirmed a fifth restaurant under its portfolio, with The Kensington set to open in autumn 2026 in a prominent ground-floor unit within a Kensington hotel property. The opening will be the group's first in west London and extends the European grand café format that has defined its identity since the original Wolseley on Piccadilly opened in 2003.
The group — which operates The Wolseley, The Delaunay in Aldwych, Brasserie Zédel in Soho and Colbert in Sloane Square — was acquired from Jeremy King by a private equity group in 2023 following a period of ownership dispute, and has since been developing its expansion plans under new leadership. The Kensington represents the first new site to be confirmed under the current ownership structure.
"The Wolseley Group has always been about a specific kind of hospitality — a place that functions from breakfast to late night, that welcomes the neighbourhood as well as the destination diner," said the group's chief executive. "Kensington is a neighbourhood that has never had that. We intend to give it one."
The Format
The Kensington will follow the all-day European brasserie format that has underpinned the group's commercial success: a menu running from breakfast pastries and coffee through to late-night bar food, with the central lunch and dinner service built around a combination of classic brasserie dishes — wiener schnitzel, steak tartare, plateau de fruits de mer — and a British daily special programme.
The room, understood to seat approximately 120 covers, will be designed by the interior team that has worked with the group across previous sites, carrying forward the dark wood panelling, mirrored walls and marble that have become the group's visual signature. The Kensington location offers high ceilings and a corner aspect that will allow a significant amount of natural light — a contrast to the more intimate enclosure of Brasserie Zédel's basement space.
The Kensington Market
Kensington's restaurant landscape is dominated by hotel dining rooms and established chain operators, with a relative scarcity of the kind of independent, quality-led all-day operations that the Wolseley Group specialises in. The neighbourhood's residential population of affluent long-term residents, combined with its tourist footfall from the nearby museums and the Albert Hall, and the corporate demand generated by the concentration of professional services firms in the area, gives it precisely the layered guest base that the group's all-day format is designed to serve.
Colbert's success on Sloane Square — another west London location that had been similarly underserved by the format — provides a direct precedent for the Kensington opening and some confidence about whether the format translates from the group's Piccadilly and Aldwych heartland to the western neighbourhoods.
The Group's Recovery
The period of ownership uncertainty that surrounded the group's acquisition from Jeremy King in 2023 — which involved acrimonious public disputes about the sale process and raised questions about the group's future direction — appears to have stabilised under the current ownership. The quality and consistency of the existing four sites have been maintained through the transition, and the confirmation of The Kensington suggests the new ownership has the capital and the appetite for the long-term investment that the Wolseley format requires.
Full details of the specific site, opening date and reservation availability will be confirmed by the group later in the year.