There must have been jubilation all round at Caprice Holdings last night, when the news broke that Westminster Council had finally agreed to give Richard Caring a licence to open a massive new restaurant in the former Theatre Museum in Covent Garden. The site in question had been the subject of a restaurant dispute at the highest ranks of the London restaurant scene after Wolseley owners Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, who had worked on a project to open a restaurant there for over two years, were apparently gazumped when the owners did a deal with Caring instead.
Caring is widely expected to open a London branch of Balthazar - the hugely successful Manhattan brasserie run by Keith McNally - on his new site. The planning committee which originally turned down Caring's application last year were told that 'the style of restaurant would be similar to The Wolseley.'
So does the good news mean that it's all go on the Balthazar project? Well...maybe.
'As you probably know there was a long standing issue with the licence, so we didn't know until last night that we were actually going to get it,' a spokesperson for Caprice Holdings told Hot Dinners. As to whether Keith McNally is on board to come in and open up Balthazar as part of a relationship with Caring and Caprice Holdings, all they would say is 'Richard and Keith are long-standing friends, so they may have had conversations about it in private, but there's no official statement.
However Caring is already in partnership with McNally in New York where he came in as a business partner investing in McNally's newest Manhattan opening, Polino's last year. And McNally told trade title Caterersearch back in October that he was 'moving back to London for a few years regardless ' of whether the Balthazar project came through or not.
