What’s On In November

When: 2–8 November The festival spreads across venues in east and central London for the week. The Avalanches play the Roundhouse on the 6th, Noname brings ten years of Telefone there on the 7th, Tortoise are at Hackney Church on the 4th and Actress at EartH on the 5th. A week of gigs in rooms small enough to hear them properly.

When: 4 November Head Chef Luke Franke marks British game season with a four-course dinner at £75 a head. It opens with venison croquette and mustard mayonnaise, then venison tartare with beetroot and green peppercorn. Mains are five-spice pigeon with plum sauce and chicory, and roast mallard with quince and celeriac, with Pomme Anna and bitter leaves alongside. To finish, chocolate mousse with sour cherry and hazelnut. The wine list leans low-intervention, small producers included. One night only, which is the right amount of pigeon.

When: From 6 November Sixteen contemporary Black designers, guest curated by author and journalist Charlene Prempeh. The show runs through six sections and finishes with a new site-specific commission by Nigerian American designer Ini Archibong. Its argument is that there’s no single way to be a Black designer, across fashion, furniture, architecture and product. Adult tickets are £19. It runs until August, so there’s time to go twice.

When: From 6 November Big Mamma’s new restaurant takes 200 covers into a Grade II-listed building at No.6 Lombard Street. The room looks to the golden age of Milan and Villa Necchi Campiglio: Art Deco, with Italian confidence on top. Head Chef Alfonso’s menu is more classically Italian than the group usually serves, with XL focaccia, gnocchi al gorgonzola and the largest selection of Phillip Warren steaks Big Mamma has offered. Pastry Chef Angelina’s desserts include a molten Italian chocolate cake and an affogato. There’s a central bar run by Ilaria, an open kitchen counter, and three private dining rooms seating 10 to 24, a first for the group. It shares a name with Big Mamma’s Hamburg restaurant and nothing else.

When: From 7 November The V&A South Kensington’s autumn exhibition traces one city through two empires. Tickets are £25 on weekdays and £27 at weekends. Go on a weekday and put the difference towards lunch.

When: From 12 November The first major exhibition to chart the fifty-year partnership between the two Bloomsbury painters, organised with Charleston. More than 300 works, from portraits, landscapes and still lifes to painted furniture, ceramics and textiles. The centrepiece is their studio, moved from the Sussex farmhouse and rebuilt inside the gallery. Farrow & Ball is among the supporters, which tells you where the colour conversation is going this winter. On 17 November there’s an evening talk on the partnership, chaired by curator Thomas Kennedy. Runs to April.

When: 13–22 November Ten days across more than sixty venues, with a Coltrane centenary tribute and sets from Melody Gardot, Fatoumata Diawara and Samara Joy. The Barbican and Southbank take the headliners. The smaller rooms are where you’ll hear something new.

When: 16, 23 and 30 November Executive Chef John Javier, who has worked at Quay, Momofuku Seiobo and Noma, starts a monthly series of guest chefs at the Golborne Road bistro. First is Valentin Raffali, executive chef at the newly reopened Bus Palladium in Paris and formerly of Marseille neo-bistro Livingston. He cooks a six-dish à la carte menu, Drunken Pigeon among it, alongside Javier on launch night. The menu then runs for the remaining Mondays of the month. Rochelle Canteen’s Hector Henderson takes over on 7 December. The name is the least restrained thing about it.

When: 19 November, from 6.30pm Helen Hall and Luke West-Whylie opened Peckham Cellars on Beaujolais Nouveau day seven years ago, and Beaujolais is the wine that brought them together in the first place. So the birthday party has an all-Beaujolais list, free-flowing. Trays of the Txuleta Burger go round, made with Spanish ex-dairy beef, piquillo pepper relish and Ossau-Iraty cream cheese, which is usually rationed to the weekend. Plots & Parcels are on the decks. Walk-in only, so get there at half six.

When: From 20 November New paintings from the Manchester-based artist. It follows her touring show A Song of Ascents, which opened at The Hepworth Wakefield in 2024, and her large outdoor commission for St Mary-le-Strand church. Free, and five minutes from the Royal Academy, so pair the two.

When: From 21 November Every portrait Jan van Eyck painted, shown together for the first time, and admission is free. There aren’t many of them, and he painted every hair. Expect a queue and stand in it.

When: From 21 November The exhibition looks at Guggenheim Jeune, the gallery Peggy Guggenheim ran at 30 Cork Street between January 1938 and June 1939. Eighteen months, a short walk from where the show now hangs, and the start of one of the twentieth century’s defining collections.

When: From 25 November A solo show of recent paintings. Kiefer in a large white room is its own weather system. Free.

When: From 28 November The former Museum of London reopens in its new home almost fifty years after the original opened in December 1976. The permanent galleries are free, and the opening exhibition and events programme is about London’s food scene, curated by guest editors. You enter through Real Time, a former covered street, and the permanent collection is in the galleries below ground. The building is the restored Victorian General Market, which has been largely unused for more than thirty years. A food programme in a former meat market. Someone was paying attention.

Weekend brunch at Khao Bird now runs on Saturdays and Sundays from 12–4pm, and it is a good argument for getting out of bed. The Brewer Street restaurant, from chef Luke Larsson and restaurateur Mike Palmer, takes its cues from the night markets of Chiang Mai, with most things cooked over live fire and a fair amount of the produce coming from Sussex farms. The brunch menu applies that to breakfast: a Sai Ua sausage and egg sando in milk bread (£12.90), a Thai fried chicken burger with green peppercorn mayo and caramelised fish sauce (£14), and crispy son-in-law eggs with tamarind, palm sugar and dill (£8.90). The mutton fries, topped with Burmese mutton curry and sour cream (£12), stay on, as does the khao soi. There are two Bloody Marys, one made with pounded som tam juice (£11.40) and a clarified version with Thai basil (£11.90). Pudding is Thai tea cheesecake or deep-fried doughnut bao with Bermondsey ice cream. Khao Bird, Brewer Street, Soho. Brunch Saturdays and Sundays, 12–4pm.

When: 19 November The new vintage lands on the third Thursday of November, and two of London’s better wine bars are marking it the same night. At The Buxton, at the foot of Brick Lane, Bristol’s Lapin is cooking in London for the first time. Founders Jack Briggs-Horan and Dan O’Regan are in the kitchen with Head Chef Owen Seamark, serving Old Winchester and black truffle gougères with honey and chicken wings stuffed with Morteau sausage. Three new releases are pouring in 75ml measures from £5 or as a flight, and there are a few magnums. It’s a standing party from 5.30pm, walk-in only. Across town, The Remedy has 10 to 15 Beaujolais by the glass and around 30 by the bottle, including older vintages and large formats. Renato Catgiu is cooking snails à la Bourguignonne with Lardo di Colonnata, pig cheek buns, and baked Vacherin with new potatoes, from 5pm. You can book there, and walk-ins are welcome too. Two parties in one night is excessive, but so is Beaujolais Nouveau.

When: 5 November Angelo Van Dyk brings his organic and biodynamic wines from Simondium, South Africa, to The Remedy for one night and pours them himself. On the list are the 2024 Good Luck Blanc, a lightly textured white edging towards orange, alongside the Good Luck Rosé and Rouge, the 8:49 Mourvèdre, the 2023 Just Kidding white and the 2024 What Could Go Wrong? V3 Chenin Blanc, an orange wine. Head Chef Renato Catgiu is cooking over fire. There are pork belly and spicy chicken skewers, lamb kofta with tzatziki, grilled mackerel with salmoriglio and ox tongue buns with salsa verde. Baby leeks with chimichurri and a fennel, orange and Kalamata olive salad come alongside. It runs from 5pm, and walk-ins are welcome. It is rare for a wine list to come with its author standing next to it.