Like I’m sure it was for many people in the industry, the news of the impending closure of Lyle’s came to me as a bolt from the blue and has caused me to mourn the loss of another brilliant restaurant.
Last year I sat down with its founder James Lowe at Lyle’s for an excellent long lunch to discuss the restaurant marking its tenth birthday and while it was evident that the past decade had been far from plain sailing it seemed like Lowe and his restaurant were in a good place to hopefully do another 10 years. The reasons for its closure are yet to be fully revealed, but however it has come about the closure of Lyle’s leaves a hole in London’s restaurant scene almost impossible to fill - hopefully until Lowe returns with a new solo project that he has promised.
It’s not hard to see the impact that Lyle’s has had on London’s dining scene this past decade. The restaurant stayed true to Lowe’s guiding principles of nose-to-tail cooking instilled in him during his time working for Fergus Henderson and supporting small-scale suppliers but also sourcing meticulously the best possible produce, whether that be on these shore or abroad. You can read its menu and instinctively know its Lyle’s without having to look for the restaurant’s name at the top.
I know a number of chefs who routinely went to Lyle’s to get a flavour of what certain products should really taste of and in my own experience of eating there the cooking has a resonance of flavour I haven’t experienced elsewhere. It was no surprise that Lyle’s became a long-time regular on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants List as well as among The National Restaurant Awards UK’s Top 100 Restaurants.
And while you can’t now move for chef collaborations, when Lyle’s started its The Guest Series back in its early days, they were few and far between. Over the past decade Lyle’s has worked with and championed a whole new generation of up-and-coming chefs from across the globe, and you can’t say that about many restaurants.
You only need to see some of the comments from chefs on Instagram following the announcement to get a true sense of the impact of Lyle’s. Elliot Hashtroudi, head chef at Camille, described Lyle’s as ‘one of the most inspiring restaurants’ while Mountain and Brat’s Tomos Parry congratulated Lowe on ’11 great years and inspiring many chefs and restaurateurs’ and Jackson Boxer said that it ‘will always be the greatest restaurant in London’.
Benjamin Chapman encapsulated it when he wrote: ‘Really a seminal restaurant for London for the last 11 years with immeasurable influence on how we source and cook for next 11.’
What is even sadder is that the imminent closure of Lyle’s is part of a worrying trend. A number of restaurants that have hitherto stood the test of time have closed in recent months, places such as Glynn Purnell’s eponymous restaurant in Birmingham, which shut last year after nearly two decades, Five Fields in Chelsea, Fhior in Edinburgh, and the original Hakkasan on Hanway Place - another seminal restaurant that almost made it to the quarter century mark - among many others.
I had the pleasure of chatting to Purnell recently and it was heartening to hear that he is not finished yet and has plenty more to offer. I hope the same will be said of Lowe and I look forward to seeing what he does next.
In the meantime, you still have a couple of weeks to sample the brilliance that is Lyle’s before it closes on 18 May.
In a perfect segue of which he would most likely approve, I can’t use this space to discuss loss and not also reflect on the life of my friend Richard Vines, who has died at the age of 71. Richard was a true one of a kind, as happy to share his knowledge of food and his extensive contacts book as he was quaffing champagne and fine wines. With his unique sartorial approach and appetite not just for a decent meal but for a story, he ploughed his own furrow and was a bon viveur to the very end. Richard exemplified the flamboyance, generosity and geniality of the hospitality sector and I will miss him.