Austere but elegant, this serene little room may be on to something special

FORK AND TALK

- Jimi Famurewa

Kuro Eatery 5 Hillgate Street, W8 7SP. Meal for two plus drinks about £120. Open Tuesday to Friday from 9am-10.30pm and Saturday from 8am-10.30pm (closed 4pm-6pm each day); kuro-london.com

★★★★✩

THIS does not really seem like the era for restaurant empire-building. Mortally-imperilled businesses are openly pleading for bookings. Barely anyone has the staffing capacity to open at lunchtime. And last month, Sunda Kitchen — a Pan-Asian affair on the Covent Garden site of what was once the ill-starred Wahlburgers — closed so abruptly that I didn’t even have time to go in and pronounce on its relative chances of survival in a seemingly cursed location (not great, as it turns out).

So on the face of it, the launch of Kuro Eatery — a new, dining-focused spin-off of Notting Hill’s minimalist Kuro Coffee — looks like counter-intuitive boldness. Throw in the fact that the team is also converting its nearby independent magazine shop, Kuro Kiosk, into a bakery (with plans to install urban beehives and vegetable gardens on vacant rooftops) and that boldness maybe edges into doomed naivety.