Nuno Mendes plans to re-open Viajante through £1.75m crowdfunding campaign

10-Nov-2015 - Last updated on 10-Nov-2015 at 11:24 GMT

Nuno Mendes is hoping to re-open his restaurant Viajante in Wapping

Chiltern Firehouse and Taberna Do Mercado chef Nuno Mendes has started a crowdfunding campaign to raise enough money to re-open former restaurant Viajante.

Mendes, who shut Viajante in January 2014 at its site within the Town Hall Hotel in Shoreditch, hopes to raise £1.75m through the equity crowd fund on Seedrs to be able to re-open the restaurant at Metropolitan Wharf in Wapping.

The chef, who has already secured the new location, said he saw the crowdfunding campaign as a way of giving friends and supporters the chance to help make his dream a reality as well as share in its future success.

Investors will be given a 33 per cent equity stake in the business with minimum investment starting at just £10.

Mendes said: "As many of you who I have had the chance to meet may know, Viajante was a very special project for myself and the team, a project that we were all incredibly proud of and extremely sad to have to end.

"We all believed that the restaurant was going from strength to strength at the time of closing and ever since I have been committed to launching it one day.

"Our challenge has been to find the right location with a better offering and in a space where the project could really realise its full potential."

Viajante at the Town Hall Hotel, which opened in April 2010, won a Michelin star in its first year of opening and received widespread critical acclaim. Mendes, who went on to work at Chiltern Firehouse and open Taberna do Mercado with Antonio Galapito following Viajante's closure intends to maintain his position as executive chef at Chiltern Firehouse when Viajante re-opens.