Brexit boom in restaurant openings as Londoners regain appetite for dining out

Restaurateurs said the spike in lunch and dinner spending — following the initial shock of Brexit — gave them confidence to invest millions of pounds in lavish new launches and refurbishments
On the table: head chef Liam Smith-Laing at the revamped Bluebird King’s Road
Alex Lentati

London is in the grip of a remarkable restaurant opening boom after a surprise summer surge in dining out following the Brexit vote.

Restaurateurs said the spike in lunch and dinner spending — following the initial shock of the June referendum — gave them confidence to invest millions of pounds in lavish new launches and refurbishments.

The number of recent and planned openings is now running far ahead of 2015, after a slight dip in July, according to figures from London restaurant website Hot Dinners.

August saw 21 launches compared with 14 last year, while 32 new restaurants are due to open their doors this month, sharply up from 22 in September 2015. Further gastronomic debuts are set to follow through the autumn and winter.

They include ventures from some of the biggest names on London’s culinary scene, including Jamie Oliver, West End tycoon Richard Caring, Soho House founder Nick Jones, Chiltern Firehouse chef Nuno Mendes and “Kings of Tapas” Sam and Eddie Hart, who founded Barrafina.

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Restaurant boss Des Gunewardena, chief executive of the D&D London dining group, said: “There was a big question for us after the vote. Are we going to continue to pile into London or should we be looking at more projects overseas in places like New York and Dubai?

“We decided that people are not going to stop having dinner out in London because of what might happen in 2018 or 2019, so we would just get on with it and press on with our strategy.” Revenues had dipped in the weeks immediately before and after the June 23 referendum but were running well ahead of last year by the second week of July and have stayed strong ever since. D&D has invested £2 million in a spectacular overhaul of its Bluebird restaurant in Chelsea, which reopens next Wednesday with chef Liam Smith-Laing in the kitchen.

Some of the most eagerly awaited new openings over the coming months include Chelsea’s Elystan Street, from two Michelin-starred chef Phil Howard; the Nordic cuisine of Aquavit London in St James’s; StreetXo, a first London venture from Spain’s three Michelin-starred “punk rock” chef David Muñoz; MasterChef Professionals judge Monica Galetti’s Fitzrovia restaurant, called Mere; Jamie Oliver’s Barbecoa Piccadilly; and The Ned, a huge hotel in the heart of The City with nine bars and restaurants from the team behind Soho House.

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Gavin Henly, co-founder of Hot Dinners, said: “I don’t see any sign of a slowdown. Nobody thought Brexit was going to happen, so people didn’t want to go out and celebrate for a while. But after a couple of weeks everything was back to normal.” Another leading restaurateur, Leonid Shutov of Soho’s Bob Bob Ricard, said a £10 million investment in a new restaurant in the City’s Cheesegrater tower, called Bob Bob Exchange, would go ahead. He said: “Brexit was a shock for everyone. But we had a fantastic summer at Bob Bob Ricard, with sales up 10 to 15 per cent every week ... London is still a vibrant city full of highly successful people.”

Latest figures also show spending in pubs and dining chains was up 2.9 per cent in London last month — fuelled by record numbers of tourists.

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