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London’s Lebanese community is buzzing; everybody’s talking about Kinz. Opened in early summer of 2026, it heralds a new style of Lebanese restaurant. Location, decor and personality are all quite different from what we’ve come to expect.

It’s in Notting Hill for a start, not an Arab-dense catchment area such as Knightsbridge or Kensington. Housed in a former bank, almost church-like in its dimensions, the first aspect to suggest that this place is a breath of fresh air is the cavernous space. Diners are spread out between the ground floor and mezzanine. There are dedicated areas for private dining such as the Rumman Room, where they’ll soon start hosting Lebanese Winemakers dinners, and the bank’s former vault has been turned into an intimate speakeasy for post-dinner cocktails or smaller private dinners.

The decor is free of clichés, there aren’t any overly obvious signs of it being Lebanese. Even the name (kinz means treasure in Arabic) might leave people guessing as to the cuisine. But then you look at the elegance with which its been decked out, the understated glamour and the beautiful large black and white photographs along the walls of scenes of old Beirut and its people (a lady poised at the edge of her balcony observing the action in the street below with a lit cigarette hanging off her lips) and you see that it’s unmistakably Lebanese. These photographs, the bespoke stunning ceiling lamp which sits above the mezzanine floor and much else were all brought over from Lebanon and made by Lebanese artisan craftspeople there.

As for personality, Kinz has three impressive founders with a strong female amongst them. And here I must declare a bias of sorts. I am already full of admiration for the female co-owner, Rasha Bruzzo Khoury. She bowled me over with Akub, her first restaurant opening in 2023, a few streets away so I had high hopes for what she was going to do next. Rasha has an eye for detail and is the sort of restaurateur that treats her restaurants in the same nurturing and devoted way with which I imagine she raises her young family. She’s always there in the background to support, encourage and make sure all is on track but is hands off enough to allow them the freedom to develop their own personality and trusts in the people she picked to run things.

Rasha is also talented in picking who she goes into business with. At Akub it was Palestinian chef Fadi Kattan, at Kinz its Lebanese brothers Jad and Karim Lahoud whose mother Elene, runs the catering company Elene’s Kitchen. Elene is well known amongst the Lebanese community in London and at Kinz she’s put her stamp on the menu and presides over the kitchen to make sure the food is up to her standards.

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And this brings me to why I was so excited to try Kinz. I knew that the menu would cover more than mixed grills (“mashawi” in Arabic). Yes, we love our mashawi and they’re on offer at every Lebanese restaurant but what I have long held out for is a restaurant that introduces London foodies to some of our hero dishes that grandmothers and mothers in Lebanon cook for their families.

Unsurprisingly, it is those dishes that make Kinz really stand out. I went with five people and was the only Lebanese person at the table, along with my half Lebanese son. I shunned the hummus and usual suspects on the small dishes list such as fatayer – spinach filled pastries – and rikakat (fried filo cigars filled with cheese) though I had to order the baba ghanoush as it’s my standard bearer for every Lebanese restaurant. If they care enough to invest the time it takes to char the flesh of the aubergines properly and season it with garlic, salt and lemon juice in the right proportions so that the result is a breathtaking dip, then it’s likely that the rest of the menu will be executed with equal care. Big tick here. The loubieh bil zeit (runner beans stewed with tomatoes, onions and garlic) was rich and full of flavour – more like my mother’s than any other I’ve tried in a restaurant.

I went straight to the dishes I came for: warak enab (rice and meat stuffed vine leaves and baby courgettes with lamb cutlets), kibbeh bilsanniyeh (a meat pie made of two layers of minced lamb, beef and bulgur stuffed with pine nuts and onions served with a cucumber and mint yoghurt), cabbage mehshé (cabbage rolls stuffed with chickpeas, rice, tomato, parsley and mint) and fattet aubergine (here the aubergine baked in a tomato sauce sits in a pool of garlicky yoghurt with crispy croutons of Arabic bread). I was a bit apprehensive of the cabbage rolls, this is my all time favourite dish from childhood but this vegetarian version threatened to mess with those memories. I was won over.  I will still make the traditional rice and meat stuffing at home but will order this every time I go to Kinz.

Sharing these dishes with my friends at Kinz was quite moving. I felt pride at showing off the breadth of our cuisine, explaining how much time and care we put into coring, stuffing and rolling to make these meals.

The wine list is another major opportunity for Kinz to champion Lebanese produce and I can’t think of any other Lebanese restaurant that does it as proudly as this place.  Exclusively Lebanese, with a good spread of smaller winemakers split into the various wine making regions of Lebanon (North Lebanon, Mount Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley and South Lebanon), it’s a celebration of our viniculture. We hugely enjoyed a bottle (maybe two) of Oumsiyat Obeidy 2025, a white from Mount Lebanon made entirely from the indigenous Obeidy grape.

The dessert menu is brief with four carefully chosen items, one of which is a fruit platter. Even after all the hearty and homely food that came before, these desserts cannot be overlooked.

I raised an eyebrow at the first listed: what’s a chocolate cake doing here? But it was Elene’s Chocolate Cake and I wanted to get to know her better. All I’ll say is that you’ll swoon over this so you can’t leave without trying it. Same for the osmalieyeh; a roll of crispy kataifi pastry filled with ashta cream and “subtle syrup” the menu reassures.  It’s the subtlety of the syrup that made this one exceptional – please eat it with your hands.

The buzz around Kinz is well founded, I’m thoroughly buzzed. My only quandary now is when I go to Notting Hill, do I eat at Akub or Kinz? Different cuisines and feels to them but that same generosity of spirit and warmth that spreads from the kitchen via the waiting staff to your table. It’s a wonderful feeling to be spoilt for choice.

kinzrestaurant.com, @kinzrestaurant

Angela Zaher is a freelance writer and regular contributor. Her articles on our emotional connection to food have been published in newspapers and magazines such as The Metro, The Standard, Delicious and Business Insider. Find her on Instagram @angela_zaher.