L'Autre Pied to close after 10 years
The restaurant, which held a Michelin star from 2009-16, will shut its doors for the final time on 9 September.
Founder David Moore, who is also behind the restaurant’s Michelin-starred sister site Pied à Terre, told BigHospitality the team were selling up to focus on new projects.
“[The sale] is strangely liberating,” says Moore. “We were made an offer for the property and after a decade it seems like a good time to do something else.
“Marylebone is an increasingly difficult market, there are so many people coming in to the area with very slick operations and it felt like the right move.”
Moore is helping Mathieu Germond, former restaurant manager at Pied à Terre, open French restaurant Noize in the ex-Dabbous site in Fitzrovia this autumn.
He has also acquired the lease on a basement space next door to Pied à Terre and will be seeking planning permission this autumn to open an 'exciting' project next to his flagship, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last year.
“London is such an energetic restaurant city it feels like if you sit back and do nothing you’re sliding backwards,” he says.
“Pied à Terre is a bit like a favourite uncle, it’s the sort of place you go where you know you’re not going to get disappointed.
“It’s possible that we’re not appealing to the younger diners. I think they want something more modern. We’re not going to change the essence of what we do, but there are ways to make it feel more contemporary.”
Moore is also behind the One Sixty restaurant group, which closed its West Hampstead restaurant in 2016 and currently operates a single site in The City. The concept originally focused on US-style smokehouse dishes but has since shifted its focus to pizza.
“I’ve lost the love affair with barbecue and smoked meat,” says Moore. “We had a good couple of years and I’m really proud of what we did but I don’t think there was the potential that I thought there was when we started out. If I was going to open a new concept I’d go vegetarian.“
