Abbie Hendren leads the kitchen at Trindle Stores in Kew

Abbie Hendren has taken over the kitchen at Trindle Stores, a family-run grocery and coffee shop in Kew Village, her first restaurant as lead chef after three years as head chef at Teal by Sally Abé in Hackney.

Hendren's CV runs through some of west London's steadiest kitchens: La Trompette in Chiswick, The Glasshouse in Kew itself, and Sam's Waterside in Barnes, before Teal. At Teal, under Sally Abé, she ran the pass for three years. Trindle Stores is a different proposition: a two-year-old independent grocery and coffee shop at 18 Station Parade, a short walk from Kew Gardens, that is adding a proper kitchen to its till and shelves rather than building a restaurant around one.

For the kitchens she is now cooking alongside across the capital, see our list of the best restaurants in London.

A kitchen built around produce that changes with what the garden sends over.

The shop's owners have kept the grocery running alongside the new food service, so regulars can still buy milk and papers while a small dining room forms around them. Produce is partly drawn from Chiswick House's walled kitchen garden, which also feeds a schools programme for local children — a supply line that ties the kitchen to the neighbourhood rather than a wholesaler's van.

A kitchen inside a grocery shop

Early dishes reported from the menu include a devilled crab crumpet, mushrooms on toast, and a fig and pistachio tart, pitched as modern British with a Mediterranean lean rather than a tasting-menu statement. The full menu was still being finalised as of the latest reports, which is typical of a kitchen built around produce that changes with what the garden sends over.

Nothing about the room suggests fine dining. The shelves, the till and the coffee machine stay; the kitchen is an addition, not a conversion, and the pricing and format look built for a village crowd rather than a destination booking.

Breakfast and lunch for now

Service for now covers breakfast and lunch, Thursday to Sunday. Evening service and supper clubs are planned for later, once the daytime kitchen has found its rhythm — a sequencing that lets Hendren test dishes on a forgiving crowd before cooking for a dinner booking.

It lands in a busy month for London kitchen reshuffles, from three head chefs swapping sites across the Wolseley Hospitality Group to Aba-Ra's khachapuri and qvevri wine landing in Soho. Trindle Stores is betting that a grocery-shop kitchen, run by someone who has already done the fine-dining shift elsewhere, is worth a detour on its own terms.