Chef Tee hoping it's third time lucky

515 Wandsworth Road, SW8 4NY. Meal for two plus drinks about £60. Open Tuesday to Saturday from noon-11pm and Sunday from noon-9pm; paradisecoveldn.com

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Paradise Cove

ONE of the first things I see on arrival at Paradise Cove is a wet paint sign: crude, all-caps scrawl tacked onto the glass of a door edged in freshly daubed canary-yellow emulsion. This is not unusual. Restaurant critics, like visiting royals, tend to live out their days in rooms haunted by the whiff of hurriedly applied Dulux.

But at this Battersea spot, that wet paint sign feels symbolic of a broader recent history of premature closure and perpetual renewal. Originally founded in 2020 as Sugarcane, Tarell "Chef Tee" Mcintosh's Caribbean-inspired restaurant is perhaps best known for the hard luck trials it has had to endure in the intervening years.

This is the place that launched a successful crowdfund after a 2022 burglary left Mcintosh with just £34, and also the place that had to shut two outlets last year after a ruinous legal dispute over its original name.