Welcoming opening of restaurant, rank heavenly spread (7)
I believe the answer is:
stratus
'heavenly spread' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I don't understand how they can define each other.
'welcoming opening of restaurant rank' is the wordplay.
'welcoming' means one lot of letters goes inside another (I've seen this in other clues).
'opening of restaurant' becomes 'r' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'rank' becomes 'status' (I've seen this before).
'r' put inside 'status' is 'STRATUS'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for stratus that I've seen before include "Large dark low cloud" , "Cloud as a grey sheet" , "Continuous cloud type" , "Grey cover" , "Cloud cover" .)