It is the place where new fashions and new lifestyle trends have been launched for decades, but how has the British capital reacted to the pandemic? London has been hit hard and the hospitality industry is no exception. After the easing of lockdown on 4 July, with new rules on safety and social distancing, the government gave a major boost to the sector in August, when it introduced its Eat Out to Help Out scheme, offering a 50% discount on food and non-alcoholic drinks – up to a maximum of £10 per person – for anyone eating out between Monday and Wednesday. The scheme exceeded expectations and over 100 million meals were eaten in the 84,700 participating restaurants and pubs. It was in fact so popular that some establishments decided to extend the offer into September and beyond, giving diners the discount themselves. According to Open Table data, restaurant bookings in the first three days of the week in August were up 53% on the previous year, compared with a fall of 54% in July.

Meanwhile, there have also been other new ideas and formats in the capital, such as the “alfresco dining areas” created in one of the western world’s oldest Chinatowns, in London’s central Soho district. Here, every day for the whole of September from midday to 8pm, diners have been enjoying the flavours of the Orient, taking advantage of the offer devised by restaurants in the #LoveChinatown campaign. For a fixed price of £8 or £10 diners can buy the traditional Chinese take-out containers: biodegradable boxes for selected dishes that fold out into a plate for socially-distanced outdoor dining in Newport Place, in a space decorated by artist Samantha Quinn with lanterns, lotus flowers and Koi carp.

Alfresco dining was how many establishments opened up last summer, and in a city that has a whole network of canals one of the trendiest ways of doing this was on a canal boat or barge. A whole range of floating restaurants appeared, offering the atmosphere of a candle-lit dinner – made all the more romantic by the reflections in the water – with the “safety” of being outdoors, complete with rainproof awnings if necessary. The gourmet menus are the creation of some of the city’s most interesting young chefs, such as Stefano Camplone at Barge East, a late 19th-century Dutch vessel moored at Hackney Wick. The experience is made all the more magical in those cases where the restaurant actually takes you on a journey, as in the case of the Willow Room in Windsor, which offers revisited English cuisine together with a cruise on the Thames, or the London Shell Company’s Prince Regent Barge, which sails along the iconic Regent’s Canal, taking in various Victorian London landmarks such as London Zoo and the long Maida Hill Tunnel.

Now, with a new curfew obliging pubs and restaurants to close at 10pm and even talk of a second lockdown, London is being taken over in what Eater has called “parallel realities”: as the alarm bells continue to ring, new establishments and pop-ups are appearing. Among the first were Pantechnicon in Belgravia, a new restaurant offering a fusion of Nordic and Japanese cuisine in an imposing neo-Classical building, and Noble Rot in Soho, which combines French and Hungarian cuisine. Others include the riverside igloos on the Southbank: Jimmy’s Lodge, Snow Globes and Hot 4U, an alliance between chefs such as Matthew Scott and Eddy Tejada who teamed up to provide delivery services during the lockdown and are now offering four fixed-price dinners at the exclusive Laylow restaurant, which sits in the shadow of the Brutalist Trellick Tower in Kensal Town.

In other words, London is still calling…