- Written by: Chefluencer Editorial Team
December is the month when chefs have the least room to move. Schedules are fixed, teams are stretched, and kitchens are already running at capacity. Leaving your own restaurant at this point in the year is a choice that carries weight. And yet, every December, a small number of chefs do precisely that. They cook in other cities, step into unfamiliar kitchens, or open their doors for a single service. These moments are brief by necessity, but rarely accidental.
The events below capture where chefs are willing to spend time and attention when both are in short supply, and which collaborations are considered worth the effort at the close of the year.
London, UK — Corenucopia by Clare Smyth
December
Let's start with the new opening by chef Clare Smyth (Core***). Corenucopia, set in Belgravia, operates as a modern bistro, day-to-day led by head chef Gary Mundi, who has long been trusted within Smyth’s kitchen orbit. The format is deliberately lighter: lunch and dinner service, shorter menus, and a pace designed for regular visits rather than long-planned occasions.
The menu reflects that intent clearly. Dishes lean on classical technique and British produce without the density of a tasting sequence: raw Orkney scallop with apple and mustard, grilled turbot with beurre blanc, roast chicken with seasonal roots, and desserts that stay direct rather than conceptual. The cooking is recognisably Smyth-trained but applied to plates meant to be ordered, shared, and returned to.
What seems to matter most for first-week diners is pace and usability. Corenucopia runs on a rhythm closer to Paris than modern London fine dining: quicker lunches, flexible ordering, wine-led evenings that do not demand commitment to a tasting sequence. Smyth’s technical standards are intact, but the experience is lighter, more social, and less prescriptive.
For London, Corenucopia fills a gap that has widened in recent years: a serious chef opening a restaurant designed to be visited often. Not a flagship, not a spin-off, but a working bistro where craft shows up on the plate rather than in the framing.
Address: Corenucopia, Belgravia, 18-22 Holbein Pl, London SW1W 8NL, UK
Website: Corenucopia
Paris, Fr - Cypsele by Marcin Król
December
Opened on November 28th, Cypsele enters December in its opening stretch, still operating at the pace of a restaurant finding its footing rather than presenting a finished statement. Led by Marcin Król, the kitchen works with an ambitious horizon: menus shift frequently, dishes appear briefly, and repetition is avoided by design. Early services suggest a format built for return visits rather than destination-ticking - a table where what you eat depends as much on timing as on intention.
Król’s background, including time in Japan and kitchens such as noma, Boragó, Le Chateaubriand, and Maison Sota, shows less in quotation than in method. The cooking leans produce-first, technically confident, and unforced, with combinations that feel exploratory without drifting into concept. There is no fixed opening menu to “catch”; instead, December offers a snapshot of the restaurant in motion, when decisions are still being tested, and the room has not yet settled into a pattern.
Some critics have already announced Cypsele as the most interesting kitchen in the city. For diners interested in where Paris bistronomy is headed next and willing to accept some unpredictability, Cypsele is the direction to take.
Address: Île Saint-Louis, ParisWebsite
Beijing, China — Monsieur Dior by Anne-Sophie Pic
Thu, December 11th
Beijing, China — Monsieur Dior by Anne-Sophie Pic
Anne-Sophie Pic added a new chapter to her international restaurant group in December with the opening of Monsieur Dior in Beijing, a special project developed in collaboration with Dior.
Pic’s global portfolio is tightly curated. It includes Maison Pic in Valence, the family restaurant that anchors her work and holds three Michelin stars; La Dame de Pic Paris, near the Louvre; La Dame de Pic London at the Four Seasons; La Dame de Pic Dubai at One Za’abeel; La Dame de Pic Megève in the French Alps; her two-star restaurant at Beau-Rivage Palace in Lausanne; and Cristal Room by Anne-Sophie Pic in Hong Kong, which holds one Michelin star. Monsieur Dior joins this group as her first project in mainland China.
Unlike her long-established restaurants under the La Dame de Pic name, Monsieur Dior is positioned as a distinct concept, created specifically for the Beijing flagship and tailored to the city’s luxury-dining audience. The menu stays close to Anne-Sophie Pic’s core repertoire. It leans on refined French dishes and desserts that reflect her long-standing approach to balance and precision, offering Beijing diners a straightforward way into her cuisine without dilution or reinterpretation. The focus is on the plate: controlled flavours, careful execution, and a style that will be familiar to anyone who knows her work in Valence, Paris, or London.
Address: Monsieur Dior, Dior Beijing flagship, Beijing, China
Rome, Italy — Santo Palato: Evan Funke × Sarah Cicolini
Fri, December 12th
To close out 2025, Santo Palato in Rome hosts a high-profile collaboration between Sarah Cicolini, one of the most influential figures in contemporary Roman cuisine, and Evan Funke, the Los Angeles–based chef behind Felix Trattoria and Mother Wolf, widely credited with reintroducing rigorous Roman pasta tradition to the U.S.
The dinner brings together two cooks who approach Roman cuisine from different geographies but share an insistence on technique, restraint, and historical accuracy. Cicolini’s work at Santo Palato has helped redefine modern Roman dining through clarity and depth rather than nostalgia. At the same time, Funke has become a global reference point for pasta as a cultural and technical discipline.
Rather than a conceptual menu, the collaboration centres on Roman fundamentals - dough, sauces, offal, and timing - cooked side by side in Cicolini’s kitchen. It is positioned as a closing gesture for the year: lineage, dialogue, and continuity.
Amman, Jordan — Dara Dining × Solemann Haddad & Sara Aqel
Mon, December 15th
Dara Dining in Amman treats this collaboration as a one-off four-hands dinner in The Tasting Room, describing it as an evening that “celebrates friendship, artistry, and a shared love for local producers.” Solemann Haddad arrives from Dubai’s Moonrise, where he holds one Michelin star and the 2022 Michelin Young Chef Award; Aqel leads Dara Dining with a Mediterranean-rooted, Jordan-framed cuisine that leans heavily on local sourcing. Together, they give Amman something it rarely gets in this format: a focused, cross-border Arab collaboration that treats Levantine produce as the main subject, not a supporting detail.
Address: Dara DIning by Sara Aqel, Al-Mutanabbi St. 46, Amman 11183, JordanDara Dining by Sara Aqel, Al-Mutanabbi St. 46, Amman 11183, Jordan
Dara's website
Copenhagen, Denmark — Bar Vitrine × Enrique Olvera
Mon, December 15th - 16th
Bar Vitrine (a sister establishment of Barabba, Bar Next Door, and Cabin) hosts one of December’s most significant collaborations: a two-night dinner with Enrique Olvera, chef-owner of Pujol in Mexico City. The dinners are limited to 38 guests per night across two seatings and sell out immediately.
Olvera joins Dhriti Arora, Bar Vitrine’s head chef and co-owner, whose background spans New Delhi, the Culinary Institute of America, and several years at noma, including time in its research kitchen. The menu is conceived as a dialogue rather than a showcase — Mexican culinary memory shaped by Olvera’s long-standing exploration of tradition and time, set against Arora’s personal, ingredient-driven cooking rooted in Copenhagen.
For Olvera, the collaboration marks a rare Scandinavian appearance and extends his influence beyond Mexico, where Pujol has spent over two decades reshaping how Mexican cuisine is understood internationally, most famously through the evolving mole madre and mole nuevo. For Bar Vitrine, it reinforces the restaurant’s role as a small, agile dining room that hosts chefs whose work prioritises thought and exchange over spectacle.
Address: Bar Vitrine, Møntergade 5, Copenhagen
Website: Bar Vitrine
Venice Lagoon, Italy — Contrada Bricconi × Venissa
Tue, December 16th
Contrada Bricconi travels from the Val Seriana to the Venetian Lagoon for a one-night collaboration at Venissa Ristorante. Chef Michele Lazzarini joins Chiara Pavan and Francesco Brutto for a shared-table dinner built around sustainability, place, and sustainability.
Both restaurants hold a Michelin Green Star, and the dinner is conceived as a dialogue between two landscapes rather than a showcase of signatures: Alpine agriculture and mountain restraint meeting lagoon produce and environmental cooking. Ingredients sourced locally, attention to territory, and ecological sensitivity form the structural backbone of the menu, with each dish treated as research rather than performance.
The evening is explicitly collaborative, with communal tables and a format that explores how two distinct ecosystems — the Bergamo Alps and the Venetian Lagoon — can intersect through cooking grounded in discipline and responsibility.
Address: Fondamenta S. Caterina, 3 - 30142 Mazzorbo Venice - Italy
Bookings: Venissa
Dubai, UAE — Taian Table × Moonrise, 4-Hands
Fri, December 19th-20th
Across two nights in Dubai, Moonrise hosts Christiaan Stoop of Shanghai’s Taian Table, creating one of December’s sharpest East-meets-Gulf dialogues. Taian Table comes in with three Michelin stars and a Green Star, recognised in the Shanghai guide for its 10–12 course menus that fuse German technique and Asian flavours around an open kitchen. Moonrise brings its own one-star “Dubai Cuisine” to the counter: a 12–14 seat rooftop chef’s table where Solemann Haddad reworks Middle Eastern ingredients through a Japanese-technical lens.
Address: Eden House - Al Satwa - Dubai - UAE
Moonrise website
Hong Kong — Test Kitchen × Tres (Rotterdam)
Dec 19-20
Tres, the 16-seat Rotterdam restaurant led by Michael van der Kroft and host Emy Koster, brings its cooking to Hong Kong for two nights at Test Kitchen. Awarded a Michelin Green Star in 2025, Tres has built its reputation on deeply personal menus shaped by Dutch seasonality, sustainability, and a refusal to separate technical ambition from emotional range.
For this pop-up, van der Kroft presents a selection of dishes that have defined Tres’ identity rather than a new concept menu. The cooking leans into contrast and precision: smoked trout roe with gooseberry in a milk-based “Seastar,” croissant cake paired with unagi, duck croquettes finished with truffle, lobster aged in pork fat and glazed over the grill, and a stroopwafel reworked with smoked duck-fat caramel. It is recognisably Dutch in product and sensibility, but filtered through a contemporary, highly controlled tasting format.
The appearance is brief and tightly scoped. Two nights only, Hong Kong diners have a rare opportunity to encounter one of the Netherlands’ most individual fine-dining projects without travelling to Rotterdam — and to do so in a format that stays close to how Tres actually cooks.
Venue: Test Kitchen, Shop 3, 158A Connaught Rd W, Sai Ying Pun, HongkongTest Kitchen, Shop 3, 158A Connaught Rd W, Sai Ying Pun, Hongkong
Website: Test Kitchen
Barcelona, Spain - Lasarte × Uliassi — Paolo Casagrande & Mauro Uliassi
December 20th
Paolo Casagrande and Mauro Uliassi reunite in the kitchen of Lasarte for a one-night dinner that carries more weight than the headline suggests.
The two first met more than two decades ago under Martín Berasategui. Since then, Uliassi has built one of Europe’s most singular three-star restaurants on the Adriatic coast, while Casagrande has shaped Lasarte into one of Spain’s most technically exacting dining rooms. Their reunion is not framed as a celebration, but as a shared reckoning with time, discipline, and Mediterranean memory.
A dedicated “Menú 4 Manos: Lasarte & Chef Uliassi” positioning the event as a top-tier year-end summit rather than a casual guest shift. Both kitchens share an obsessive approach to technique and product; here, they fold that into a single tasting, using Lasarte’s dining room as neutral ground between San Benedetto del Tronto and Barcelona. For diners who chase cross-border collaborations at the very highest level, this is the one December ticket in Spain that actually justifies the scramble.
Address: Lasarte - Carrer de Mallorca, 259, L'Eixample, 08008 Barcelona, Spain
Lasarte's website
Venice Lagoon, Italy — Venissa Christmas & New Year’s Season
December 24th, 25th and 31st
For those looking to step away from Venice’s crowded centre without leaving the city behind, Venissa offers a December programme built around stillness, place, and continuity.
Across Christmas, Christmas Eve, and New Year’s Eve, Venissa opens its estate on Isola di Mazzorbo to guests seeking a slower festive rhythm: seasonal menus rooted in lagoon produce, refined service, and the quiet geography of the northern Venetian islands. The experience combines high gastronomy with territory, framed by Venissa’s ongoing work in viticulture, vegetable gardens, and ecological stewardship.
Rather than positioning the holidays as a one-night event, Venissa treats the festive period as an extended invitation — allowing guests to stay, dine, and mark the year’s end in Burano. It is Venice Lagoon at its best: fewer people, more time, and cooking that remains closely tied to its surroundings.
Address: Fondamenta S. Caterina, 3 - 30142 Mazzorbo Venice - Italy
Bookings: Venissa
Athens, Greece — Pharaoh Athens: “L’Avventura Italiana” (3rd Anniversary)
Sun, Dec 28th
Pharaoh marks its third anniversary with a one-day Italian takeover. The line-up pulls from across regions and disciplines, bringing cooking, wine, pastry, cocktails, and sound into a single, extended service that runs from afternoon into the night.
From the Venetian lagoon comes Venissa, represented by chefs Chiara Pavan and Francesco Brutto, whose Michelin-starred cooking is grounded in lagoon ecology, invasive species, and zero-waste practice. Locale Firenze, ranked No. 22 on the World’s 50 Best Bars 2025 list, brings its research-driven cocktail approach rooted in Italian ingredients and historical technique. Pastry comes from Andrea Tortora of Cremona, widely regarded for his panettone and precision-led pâtisserie shaped by his time at St. Hubertus. Music is handled by Milan’s Jimmy Fattore, whose vinyl sets draw from Mediterranean warmth and deep sonic research.
Rather than a formal tasting or ticketed dinner, the format is deliberately loose: limited seating, a strong walk-in culture, food and drinks circulating throughout the day. For travellers or locals in Athens at year’s end, it offers a rare chance to experience several top-tier Italian operators in one place, without the ceremony or rigidity that usually surrounds them.
Address: Pharaoh Athens, Solomou 54, Athina 106 82, Greece
Time: 14:30–02:00
Bookings: Limited seats, mostly walk-ins
Website: Pharaoh
Planning for Noma LA next year?
December
Here is a pro tip for Noma fans or a quite pricey Xmas gift idea.
For readers eyeing noma’s Los Angeles residency next year, the most realistic route isn’t waiting for public reservations — it’s the Noma Taste Buds membership. The programme, which began as a small R&D circle, now gives members priority access to limited seats for noma residencies, including early booking for the LA run under the Taste Buds Unlocked LA tier.
In 2025, members were invited inside noma for multi-day masterclasses, production tours, tastings with Noma Projects, and dedicated dinners in Copenhagen. In 2026, the access goes further: select services at noma will be opened exclusively to Taste Buds members, both in Los Angeles and during a special Taste Buds-only Copenhagen season.
For anyone serious about actually getting a seat — rather than chasing resale rumours — Taste Buds is now the practical entry point, not a fan club.
More details and membership options are available directly via nomaprojects website
December is not an easy month to open a restaurant. Staffing is stretched, supply chains are tight, and kitchens are already operating at full capacity. For that reason alone, the calendar is notably quiet for new launches. Clare Smyth’s Corenucopia stands out precisely because it is not an opening in the conventional sense, but the first whole month of service for a restaurant that has already found its footing and deserves attention.
For the same reasons, collaborations in December tend to be fewer and shorter than at other points in the year. One or two nights. Limited menus. Minimal room for error. That constraint gives these dinners their weight. Chefs do not travel lightly in December, and when they do, it is usually to cook with peers they know well, in kitchens that can absorb the pressure. This month’s pop-ups, four-hands dinners, and seasonal services show alignment, attention, craft and relationships — brief encounters that still carry professional and cultural significance.
December at a glance
What are the restaurants closing in December 2025?
- Soul Kitchen, the restaurant by chef Luca Andrè in Turin, will close permanently on December 31st after 12 years.
- Silo in London, led by Chef Douglas McMaster, will close its doors on December 20th, 2025, after 11 years.
- Karime Lopez is leaving Gucci Osteria in Florence on December 20th. She joined the project at its launch in January 2018 and has led the kitchen since opening, overseeing its evolution from a high-profile brand opening to a Michelin-starred restaurant with a distinct, internationally recognised voice. Her departure in 2025 marks the end of a whole seven-year chapter at Gucci Osteria Florence.
What are the most important fine dining events and chef collaborations happening in December 2025?
- Evan Funke is cooking in Rome at Santo Palato with Sarah Cicolini, focusing on Roman pasta traditions and technique.
- Enrique Olvera is hosting a two-night pop-up at Bar Vitrine in Copenhagen, bringing Mexican culinary philosophy into a Nordic context.
- Solemann Haddad (Moonrise, Dubai) is collaborating with Sara Aqel at Dara Dining in Amman for a Levantine-driven pop-up dinner.
- Paolo Casagrande is welcoming Mauro Uliassi for a one-night collaboration at Lasarte in Barcelona.
- Taian Table’s kitchen team is joining forces with Moonrise in Dubai for a four-hands pop-up blending Chinese fine-dining technique with Middle Eastern flavours.
- Test Kitchen in Hong Kong welcomes Tres Rotterdam (Michael van der Kroft and Emy Koster), for 2 nights of collaboration.
- Pharoe Athens is celebrating it's 3rd anniversary with a crazy day of Italian invasion of Venissa (Chiara Pavan and Francesco Brutto), Locale Firenze, Andrea Tortora, Jimmy Fattore mastering vinyls.
Who is cooking at Santo Palato on 12 December and why is it important?
Sarah Cicolini and Evan Funke, focusing on Roman culinary fundamentals in the month that Italian Cuisine was listed as a UNESCO Cultural Heritage.
Other
Gucci opened Gucci Gardino in Osaka, a sister cocktail bar to the first one ever in Florence. Located in the redesigned boutique at Herbis Plaza in Umeda, the bar, designed in Rosso Ancora red, is a bridge between Italian elegance and Japanese minimalism. The cocktails reflect that combination in innovative mixology.
Check also what happened in November here.