Friday Five: the week's top news
- Sir Terence Conran's London restaurant group has gone in to administration with the closure of three sites. Lutyens on Fleet Street, Albion in Clerkenwell and Parabola at the Design Museum in Kensington have all shut their doors, with administrators citing "changing consumer demand". The Boundary Hotel remains open under the ownership of a new company owned by the Conran family.
- Lyle's in Shoreditch has entered the World's 50 Best Restaurants list, making its debut at number 38. The annual rankings, announced on Tuesday, featured three other London restaurants - The Clove Club (33), The Ledbury (42) and Dinner by Heston Blumenthal (45). Massimo Bottura's Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy took the number one spot for the second time.
- Chef Alexis Gauthier has said his French fine dining restaurant Gauthier Soho will go completely vegan within 18 months to two years. It will complete the site's gradual shift towards plant-based menus from serving more than 20kg of foie gras a week a few years ago. Gauthier told Restaurant magazine's Restaurant Congress he is no longer creating any new dishes using meat, eggs or dairy, and says the "pure creativity has to lie with veganism".
- Chef Tom Kerridge has revealed further details on Kerridge's Bar & Grill, his debut London restaurant opening at the five-star Corinthia Hotel in September. The 90-cover dining room will see large joints of meat, fish and root vegetables cooked on a rotisserie bar in front of diners, while a separate bar area will serve snacks and wines and beers on tap. Nick Beardshaw, head chef at Kerridge's Michelin-starred The Coach in Marlow, will lead the kitchen team.
- The international director of the Michelin Guides, Michael Ellis, is to step down in September to join the luxury Dubai-based Jumeirah hotel group. Ellis, who expanded the red book to 30 countries, will take up the newly-created role of chief culinary officer. He will be tasked with developing new restaurant concepts and bringing Jumeirah's existing sites up to "industry-leading levels". Dubai currently doesn't have its own edition of the Michelin Guide, though Ellis himself fuelled speculation a launch was imminent at a talk in 2016.
For more of this week's news, click here.
