London Museum’s new Smithfield home is being planned as more than a cultural address.
When it opens on 28 November 2026, the restored Victorian General Market will also introduce four distinct hospitality spaces, each designed to connect the museum with the city around it.
Green & Fortune is developing the venues with London Museum, with Robin Gill overseeing culinary direction alongside Green & Fortune Chef Director Dan Rampat, while Mr Lyan Studio will shape the cocktail programme at the bar.
At a glance
- London Museum’s Smithfield opening will include four new food and drink venues from Green & Fortune.
- The line-up spans an all-day dining room, a London-inspired bar, a sober social café and a rotating residency space.
- The museum opens on 28 November 2026 inside the restored Victorian General Market, with more than two million visitors expected annually.
Smithfield gets a hospitality programme with museum ambition
The move to Smithfield marks one of London’s most closely watched cultural openings, bringing the long-disused General Market back into public life after more than three decades.
Food and drink won’t sit at the edge of the experience.
The four venues are being positioned as destinations in their own right, with many benefiting from street entrances as well as access through the museum.
That matters in Smithfield, where market culture, late-night eating, pubs, cafés and working-city rituals have long shaped the neighbourhood’s identity.
The programme draws on London’s food history without turning it into costume drama, taking cues from pie shops, oyster bars, bakery counters, late cafés and contemporary street food.
Interiors by Russell Sage Studio, working with Green & Fortune, will combine restored historic details with contemporary design, giving each venue its own mood while keeping it tied to the wider museum setting.
Clerks House brings the all-day London dining room into the museum
Clerks House at London Museum will be the largest and most complete dining proposition in the new line-up.
The 140-cover restaurant will sit on the General Market ground floor within the museum’s Our Time area, serving breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, weekend brunch and Sunday roasts.
Its cooking is being framed around London’s culinary memory and present-day breadth, with a focus on seasonal produce, craft and the influences that have shaped the city’s table.
Menus will include beef and lamb from Green & Fortune’s own farm, along with pies curated by Robin Gill.
Confirmed dishes include mutton stew with barley, root vegetables and fresh herbs, plus a take on the traditional Billingsgate sandwich made with hand-dived scallop, crispy smoked bacon and scallop roe butter.
The wine list will change weekly by the glass, bringing together old world, new world and skin-contact wines from smaller growers.
Clerks House will also host a monthly ticketed dinner club, one-off events and private hire, giving it a role beyond standard museum dining.
Bartholomew’s looks to London’s grit, glitter and late-day rhythm
Bartholomew’s takes its name from Bartholomew Fair, the summer festival held in Smithfield for more than seven centuries.
The bar will occupy a prominent Farringdon Road position on the museum’s perimeter, making it a natural stop for after-work drinks as much as for exhibition visitors.
Mr Lyan Studio will curate an evolving cocktail menu connected to London Museum’s seasonal events and displays.
The opening menu will be linked to London Tastes, the museum’s inaugural programme exploring the city’s food culture and the stories behind it.
A permanent London Made cocktail menu will sit alongside seasonal serves, including a signature shandy and a draught London Museum lager.
Food will focus on elevated pub classics and snacks, keeping the bar approachable rather than ceremonial.
The interiors will draw on the movement and colour of London’s streets, with a design intended to shift through the day and blur the line between inside and outside.
Temperance Cocoa Rooms and The Roost widen the brief
The Temperance Cocoa Rooms may become the most distinctive of the four venues.
The space revives the former Lockhart’s Cocoa Rooms, a rare historic survival uncovered during the museum’s renovation, and returns it to the idea of sober socialising.
Its menu will include customisable hot chocolates, a bespoke ginger beer, coffee mocktails and a late-night float menu.
It will open daily, with 24-hour trading from Thursday to Sunday, reflecting the round-the-clock pulse of the city and the area’s long relationship with early starts and late finishes.
The Roost will add a more changeable layer to the overall offer.
Conceived as a rotating residency space, it will be used to showcase emerging and exciting London talent, allowing the museum’s hospitality programme to keep evolving after opening week.
That mix of permanence and movement feels well judged for a museum trying to tell London’s story in the present tense.
For visitors, it means Smithfield won’t simply be a place to see the city’s history.
It will be a place to eat, drink, linger and watch London continue to remake itself.
