It’s not good for London if fine dining flees City for suburbia

SCOTT’S has opened its first branch, in Richmond. While that is a fillip for the south-west London borough, it’s also a telltale development. Time was when the venerable Mayfair restaurant would have plumped for the City or Canary Wharf. Instead, it’s opted for the suburbs.

- Chris Blackhurst

Richmond is affluent all right, and its riverside is cosmopolitan, upmarket and buzzy round the corner from Scott’s is an outlet of The Ivy, also owned by restaurateur Richard Caring. Whether Richmond can stomach Scott’s prices of 40 for fruits de mer, 46 for Dover sole and a bottle of white Burgundy Grand Cru at 1200 remains to be seen. To be fair, they are at the top end of the menu and wine list. They’re also cheaper than the mother ship Dover sole in Mount Street is 48 and fruits de mer 50, and it carries several bottles at more than 1000.

Nevertheless, the new Scott’s is pitching high, at a level that sits happily with expense accounts in finance, law, accountancy, insurance. The holders of those accounts now work from home part of the week, in neighbourhoods like Richmond hence the choice of location.

The burghers of the City of London Corporation and the managers of Canary Wharf should be alarmed. It comes, too, as research from OpenTable shows that the number of diners making reservations through its system across the UK rose by 18%in September but in London it fell by 14%.