According to reports in The Caterer and The Evening Standard, it seems that The Victor Garvey at the Midland Grand restaurant, which is part of the St Pancras London hotel, may have closed, after roughly five months of trading.
The Victor Garvey was not only based in one of the most beautiful rooms in one of London’s most iconic hotels, but was also widely praised for the quality of the cuisine. The eponymous Victor Garvey, who also owns a Soho restaurant called Sola and holds a Michelin star, launched the restaurant in late February with businessman Harry Handelsman, the owner of The Midland Grand.
The Caterer reported that it had been told by a staff member at the Marriott-owned Autograph Collection hotel that the restaurant had closed as of 15th July
The website for the Midland Grand Dining Room now seems to be down and Its Instagram page also makes no mention of Victor Garvey.
When it opened it served dishes such as lobster tempered in butter and served out of the shell with its own roe and spiced carrot, as well as red tuna served with white peach, roasted leek and a green almond sorbet and Giles Coren wrote in his Times review that: “Victor is doing fancy French now, and quite brilliantly, of course.”
Of course the failure of restaurants is a story as old as time, but it is hard not to conclude that National Insurance and other tax rises, a difficult economic situation and the lingering difficulties of staffing post-Brexit are conspiring to wreak considerable damage across the hospitality industry. And as someone who remembers how, bluntly, utterly shit the food scene was in London thirty years ago, I am getting quite nervous…