Even for a famously hard grafter like Jason Atherton, it is going to be a gruelling autumn. The chef who spent part of his childhood growing up in a caravan in Skegness will be opening restaurants numbers 30, 31 and 32 in an illustrious career that has brought him Michelin stars, wealth and TV fame.
Next month sees the launch of his ”best of British” venue, Sael in St James’s, followed in October by Three Darlings in Chelsea and a top notch fine dining “culinary voyage” destination, Row on 5 on Savile Row. Phew.
Atherton, 53 next week, says this “terrifying” burst of opening activity is likely to be his swansong in London, a city he ran away to at the age of 16 when he first lived in a three-bedroom house shared with 13 other chefs.
Atherton still toils in at least one of his kitchens every working day and few restaurateurs have a better feel for the shifting moods and expectations of the London restaurant-going public.
It was that hunch that the times were a-changing that led him, rather ruthlessly, to shut down his Michelin starred Pollen Street Social flagship in Mayfair at the end of July.
Many chefs too attached to their own creations would have blithely carried on until the administrators moved in. But not Atherton. The space is now filled by a new venue called Mary’s offering, true to Atherton’s northern roots, “good food without pretension” including a £35 three-course prix fixe for lunch and early dinner.
For Atherton is a firm believer that the golden age of fine dining in London is over, for now at least, killed by the twin body blows of the Covid pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis. In this changed world, 5pm is the new 8pm, as, according to Atherton, the cost of housing in London means that ever more of his customers live outside the centre.
When they fancy a night out they will go out straight after work, hit the train back to Zone 6 at the time they might once have considered sitting down for their dinner and are tucked up in bed by 10pm for an early start.
Budget constraints mean that average spend is nowhere near what it was too. There will always be an elite who can afford to open their wallets every night, but for most Londoners, post-Covid, spend per head has settled down at about £40 to £50 for lunch, and £80 to £90 “for a nice dinner”. The days when they would routinely drop over £100 each and not blanch have gone. Given how much bills have increased over recent years, that is a huge reduction in spending in real terms.
It is not good news for sommeliers. Where once there were a team of 12 at Pollen Street Social fussing over customers and recharging their wine glasses more quickly than they could be emptied, now there are just three at Mary’s. Bottles are left on the table, rather than being topped up from “16 feet away” and punters will, say it gently, have to pour their own wine.
The cost-saving sommelier cull is symptomatic, insists Atherton, of the harsher, more budget-conscious realities of London’s post-Covid fine dining scene. It is a far cry from the big money-making heydays of the Nineties and Noughties. But London — and its restaurateurs — have always adapted to changed circumstances. And will do again.
