Florence Knight's Lunette opens on London's skyline

Florence Knight opens her first solo restaurant this week, a 30-cover room on the 11th floor of the St Clement hotel in Temple, looking out over the Thames.

Lunette sits above a 90-room hotel from Nick Jones, the Soho House founder, at 180 The Thames, on the river side of Temple. The hotel's ground-floor room, Café Clement, opened to the public in June; Lunette is the rooftop addition that was always meant to follow.

For more tables worth booking, see our list of the best restaurants in London in 2026.

Lunette is Knight's first restaurant with her own name on the door.

Knight made her name at Polpetto, the small Soho Italian she ran for a decade, and more recently cooked at Sessions Arts Club in Clerkenwell. Lunette is her first restaurant with her own name on the door rather than someone else's menu to interpret.

Early listings put a set lunch at around £70 and dinner at £110, prices that place Lunette alongside London's other hotel-rooftop openings rather than the neighbourhood trattoria register Knight built her reputation on at Polpetto.

A rooftop room with a river view

The 11th-floor setting is the sell: a dining room with Thames views in a part of London, Temple, that has more barristers' chambers than restaurants. St Clement also holds 15 loft-style apartments and a gym, positioning the hotel for longer stays as well as dinner bookings.

It is the latest high-profile opening to land on a hotel roof rather than a high street, a trend that has let operators charge for the view as much as the cooking, and one this year's Michelin additions to the UK and Ireland guide have increasingly rewarded.

Why it matters beyond Temple

Knight's move follows a wider pattern of chefs who built their reputations in small, personal dining rooms taking on bigger, hotel-backed spaces, a trajectory also visible at Roast's second site inside a Shoreditch hotel this autumn. The risk is losing the intimacy that made the original room work; the reward is a kitchen with proper budget and a view no neighbourhood restaurant can offer.

Lunette opens for lunch and dinner from Tuesday to Saturday. Whether Knight's cooking translates from a 24-cover Soho room to an 11th-floor dining room with river views is the question London's critics will spend the next few weeks answering.