Hilary Armstrong

Spring is here, so we hope you’ll forgive us a little optimism. After a gruelling couple of years, the effects of which are still hitting London’s restaurants, bars and cafés hard, we might have hoped for a few green shoots of recovery at best. But actually, this season, there’s been a full-blown flowering of creativity. There are always new restaurants – London just can’t seem to get enough – but it’s the nature of them that’s so promising. Old friends, new faces, cult names and exciting independents are all championing, in their own way, a twenty-first-century model of hospitality that’s open-hearted, outward-looking and truly original. Step into spring. Photograph: Caravel Set sail for Regent’s Canal Ahoy, landlubbers! All aboard the good ship Caravel, a floating restaurant moored on the Regent’s Canal at Hoxton. The beautiful old Dutch barge belongs to brothers Fin and Lorcan Spiteri who grew up in the hospitality biz (their old man, Jon, a legend among maître ds, co-owns Sessions Arts Club). Lorcan (ex Quo Vadis, Rochelle Canteen) is on the stoves, cooking good hearty stuff like pork belly with anchoïade, crab tagliatelle and prawn toast with spiced tartare, while Fin’s on drinks. Rum ’n’ Coke Old Fashioned? Consider our boat floated. Wednesday to Saturday evenings only for now. 172 Shepherdess Walk, N1 7JL. Open now.  Photograph: Sam A Harris Heaven is a place on earth LA chef Julian Denis’s cult Sichuanese Mao Chow on Mare Street has transformed the vegan scene. No