Friday five: the week's top news
- AngoThai’s John and Desiree Chantarasak are to open their first permanent restaurant next year. The central London restaurant will be backed by MJMK, the London-based group of restaurants and bars that are behind the likes of Portuguese Casa do Frango and soon-to-launch Cuban Bar La Rampa, as well as Kol, Santiago Lastra’s critically-acclaimed Mexican restaurant, which opened last October. AngloThai has run a number of high profile residencies across London in venues including The Dairy and Newcomer wines. John has built a reputation as one of the UK’s most exciting Thai chefs, with time spent in kitchens across London, Europe, North America and Asia, including Som Saa, and David Thompson’s Nahm.
- Chef residency restaurant Carousel will close its doors in Marylebone later this year and relaunch as a much larger multifaceted restaurant in Fitzrovia. On Charlotte Street within three converted Georgian townhouses, Ed and Ollie Templeton’s new space will stay true to Carousel’s roots with an ever-changing line-up of guest chefs running the kitchen. But the concept will evolve considerably, with the new venue also set to be home to a wine bar that will be open throughout the day; a ten-seater incubator for new concepts and longer-term residencies; and separate spaces dedicated to private dining, workshops and events.
- Corbin & King is locked in a legal battle with the landlord of its Mayfair flagship The Wolseley over unpaid rent that has accumulated during the course of the pandemic. The Financial Times reports that The Wolseley’s Jersey-based landlord STJ Investments is demanding Corbin & King pay all of the c.£1m of rent debt that built up while the restaurant was closed during Coronavirus lockdowns. It has tried to evict The Wolseley by taking Corbin & King to court. So far, the restaurant group has defended itself using a clause in the lease that precludes payment of rent if trading is not permitted at the site by government edict.
- Chef Kenny Atkinson is to launch a second restaurant with his wife Abbie on Newcastle’s Quayside. Called Solstice, the restaurant is being billed a sister site to Newcastle-born Atkinson’s Quayside flagship House of Tides, which launched back in 2014. Atkinson confirmed the opening on Instagram, but there were no further details available at the time of writing. House of Tides is located on the Newcastle Quayside and set within a carefully restored Grade I-listed former merchant’s townhouse. The restaurant is also a regular on the Estrella Damm National Restaurant Awards top 100 list.
- The Ivy Collection has promised to review the concept, culture, and all internal and external processes of its Ivy Asia off-shoot, after being heavily criticised for a ‘culturally insensitive’ advert. In a statement The Ivy Asia, which is owned by Richard Caring’s Caprice Holdings restaurant group, said it had a ‘complete ignorance of understanding’ and promised to educate itself to ensure it ‘100% doesn’t happen again’. The now-deleted video ad for The Ivy Asia Chelsea showed women dressed as geishas struggling to get into a rickshaw being pulled by an elderly Asian man. It tips over and they are saved by a martial arts-type figure labelled ‘the hero’, who uses superhuman strength to propel them to the restaurant. Once there they struggle to get through the doors with bags of shopping. They then fall through the doors and are stared at by other customers.
