The incredibly fast-paced nature of the restaurant industry means that it can sometimes be tricky to keep your finger on the pulse. Practically every day a new restaurant opens and another closes, a chef announces they’re changing direction or moving kitchen, and a new ‘best restaurants’ list drops. And that is exactly why we’ve created The Hot Plate – a Friday round-up of the biggest pieces of chef and restaurant news from the past week – so that you can easily stay up to date with the latest goings-on in the restaurant world. Each week we’ll be updating this page with the headlines that have caught our attention, the new opening we're most excited about and our recommendations for where you should be heading – so make sure to check back every Friday.

This week, news of the debut restaurant from a former Tom Kerridge group head chef, the UK's best local restaurants are revealed and it's all change at Shoreditch's Bistro Freddie.

Bistro Freddie's head chef Anna Søgaard is leaving the restaurant after a year, she confirmed this week. The chef, previously of Manchester's Erst, oversaw the opening of the Shoreditch restaurant, which is from the team behind Spitalfields' Crispin. Anna hasn't confirmed what she's moving onto, but in the short term she'll be taking her female-led supper club Suppher to France's Marseille for its first international outing.

As we revealed a few weeks ago, Nick Beardshaw is set to open his first restaurant after leaving the Tom Kerridge group, where he had worked for fourteen years, but we now have a few more details. Nick will launch Starling in his home town of Esher, in Surrey, at the end of August, serving seasonal British ingredients in a concise menu, usually with no more than five dishes per course. It will include A Moon Shaped Pool, Nick's winning fish starter from Great British Menu 2023.

Greg Clarke, the former development chef at Daniel Clifford's two-star Midsummer House in Cambridge, is set to open a Mexican restaurant called El Bolillo in Hove this September. It will focus on tacos, with hand pressed masa and flame-grilled sharing cuts in the works. The name comes from Mexican street slang meaning 'the white boy', which its website says is 'a brazen and cheeky nod to a British chef opening a taqueria'. Greg, who has previously worked with Brett Graham and Tom Aikens and headed up Hackney's Pidgin, will open El Bolillo with partner Matty Salvetti, whose background is in front of house.

The Good Food Guide has announced its 100 Best Local Restaurants for 2024, including its overall winner – French bistro Bavette in Leeds (which also took home the North East England award). Elsewhere, Abby Lee's Mambow was named best local restaurant in London, while the Greyhound Inn in Pettistree scooped the award for Central and East of England. Up in the North West, Cibus in Levenshulme was crowned winner, while in the South East Brighton's Med was given the honour. In the South West, it went to North Street Kitchen in Fowey, while over in Wales, Inn at the Sticks in Llansteffan won.