In an Instagram post, Boxer said that the West London restaurant’s focus on fish and seafood meant it had ‘never been a very lucrative business’.
“We specialised in working with a fragile and elusive product with a minuscule shelf life that needs a great deal of labour to prepare, and though we’re busier than we’ve ever been in terms of guests through the door, those guests have considerably less freedom to spend than perhaps they once did,” he said.
“And as such, being unable to raise prices and unwilling to work with a cheaper and inferior product, we have decided to imagine a bold new future for ourselves in quite another direction.
“The function endures even as the form adapts.”
Boxer opened Orasay on Kensington Park Road back in 2019.
The restaurant, which is named after an uninhabited Hebridean island, is listed in the Michelin Guide and has previously featured on the National Restaurant Awards Top 100 list.
“Riding through the pandemic and various other upsets, the team and I built a beautiful restaurant, serving some distinctive and original food,” Boxer said.
“We also built a wonderful community, both of regulars based in our neighbourhood, but also some remarkable and adventurous souls from overseas, discovering us perhaps through the marvels of Instagram, but getting to know us in person on the occasions they were in London.
“We got invited to cook across the world, from Sydney to New York, and returned the favour, asking many great chefs to come and cook with us.”
Boxer added that he has ‘a pretty good sense’ of what the new restaurant will look like and is excited to bring it to life.
“Please then keep your eyes peeled for news of what we’re planning next,” he added.
“Hopefully it’ll excite you as much as it does me.”
Boxer is also the chef patron of Vauxhall restaurant Brunswick House.
Additionally, he oversees the kitchen at French bistro Henri in Covent Garden and Cowley Manor Experimental in the Cotswolds as chef consultant for restaurant and bar operator Experimental Group.
