The Mayfair restaurant will close on 31 July and will initially reopen as a pop-up on 16 August before a more permanent change in the new year.
Called Mary’s, the site will house a version of Atherton’s The Blind Pig bar at the front of the restaurant, with Pollen Street Social’s chef’s counter being transformed into a burger bar and the remainder of the space becoming Mary’s. The kitchen will be led by Alex Parker, executive chef at Social Eating House.
The 10-seat counter, called Burgers Only, will serve just one smashed burger for £14. It won’t take bookings but diners will be able to wait in the Blind Pig bar for a seat to become available.
The restaurant will run in this way until 31 December when it will close for four months for a full refit. The downstairs area of the restaurant will then become a smashed burger bar and speakeasy concept called Meat and Two Veg, which will serve a plant-based burger alongside the smashed burger.
The main restaurant will be “grill heavy”, according to Atherton, with a focus on meat and fish, and is described by the chef and restaurateur as being “very affordable”.
The restaurant is named after a customer called Mary who Atherton says was a regular at Pollen Street Social before the pandemic and before he made the decision to make the restaurant more high end.
“Mary was a professor from America who would always sit at the counter and have a Martini and a small steak,” he says. “It was the epitome of what this restaurant used to be, that we used to attract people like that. We loved Mary.
“The Marys stopped coming when [Pollen Street Social] went more fine dining; it was no longer accessible. That always struck a chord with me. We lost all these interesting people because we got too fine dining.”
Mary’s is just one of a number of projects that Atherton will open this year. Later this month the chef will open gourmet hot dog counter Hot Dogs by Three Darlings in Harrods, followed by modern British brasserie Sael on the former Aquavit site in London’s St James’s Market development, and neighbourhood-style bistro Three Darlings on Pavilion Road in London’s Chelsea
In November he will open high-end restaurant Row on 5 on London’s Savile Row with Spencer Metzger, former head chef at The Ritz. The 28-cover restaurant will serve a multi-course tasting menu and follows the launch of Row on 45 in Dubai, which was recently awarded two stars in the Michelin Guide.
Atherton announced in March that Pollen Street Social would close after 13 years.