The London restaurants and bars that won’t reopen

Monty’s has been another casualty of the pandemic after closing its venues in Market Halls and Spitalfields’s Kitchen and struggling to keep afloat relying on sandwich meal kits and wholesale sales. Sadly, the New Yoik-style sarnie maestros have called it a day for good. Known for its famous pastrami, salt beef and bagels.

While sister restaurant Ceviche thankfully lives on, lovers of Peruvian cuisine will be saddened to learn that Shoreditch’s Andina has closed its doors for good. Andina cited difficulties with its landlords over rent in an announcement on Instagram but also said it was working on finding a new space to carry on the concept. With Ceviche in Old Street shut, you’ll have to head to Ceviche Soho for your Pisco Sour fix.

The novelty of chomping on a hotdog while quaffing glasses of champagne is now one sadly confined to your own home, with the closure of Bubbledogs. It had been around for more than six years and had even undergone a recent refurb, but the space is now being used to allow its sister Kitchen Table (a Michelin-starred restaurant residing in the basement) to spread out. The silver lining? You can purchase fizz online from Bubbleshop.

This iconic cabaret venue opened in 1924 and achieved notoriety by initially staying open during the start of the Second World War. Sadly, the central London spot announced in December 2020 that it would be closing its doors for good as a result of the pandemic.

SE15’s iconic bar, pool hall and nightlife venue Canavan’s declared itself a victim to the 10pm curfew when it shared it would be closing for good in September 2020. Canavan’s was been a remarkable venue known for its dancefloor, cheap booze and inspired late-night programming, including its excellent all-vinyl Rhythm Section nights.

Another West End restaurant to fall victim to the crisis, Le Caprice was the favoured hangout of Princess Diana and had been in the business of very fine dining for 38 years, before it announced its closure. However, the restaurant already has plans in the works for a new site under the same name. Hopefully it’ll be just as slebby.

The twin-brother owners of Cereal Killer Café – the cult London hangout where you could eat bowls of exotic cereal at any time of day – took to Facebook to alert their adoring audience that both its Brick Lane and Camden venues won’t be returning. The pair talked of their hopes of a comeback in a year or so’s time, but for now, cereal lovers can purchase from their sprawling online collection to fill the Sugar Puff-shaped void.

The Shoreditch offshoot of the Soho original was a great fave with eastside lovers of Peruvian food, but it closed right before the pandemic in January 2020.

A highly snazzy place near Angel, this was easily one of London's slickest cafés. An interior to die for, mates. Sadly it shut up shop towards the start of lockdown. Redemption Roasters have since moved in.

One of the West End’s true icons won’t live to rock another day: Crobar has said it won’t be able to reopen due to difficulties with rent payments during lockdown. Crobar opened in 2001 as an antidote to the area’s poppily mainstream nightclubs and bars, and its rockin’ drinks collection, heavy-metal-heavy jukebox and anarchistic atmosphere fast made it a firm favourite for those in the know. We’re raising a bourbon to the legendary haunt as we speak (11am).

Ryan Chetiyawardana took to Instagram to announce the sad demise of ‘the baby of the group’ in his Mr Lyan restaurant-bar empire. Cub had earned a five-star review from Time Out for its zero-waste concept – dreamed up in collaboration with chef Doug McMaster. It blurred the boundaries between food and drink and took its sustainable ethos as far as making its tables from old yoghurt pots. The venue will be kept as Mr Lyan’s creative HQ, while Lyaness bar on the South Bank happily lives on.

It was always going to be a challenge for this diddy restaurant and its 14-seater concept offshoot next door to weather the Covid storm, but it was still a shock to hear that Clapham’s The Dairy and Counter Culture are no more. ‘This has been one of the toughest decisions of our lives. The pandemic has hit us harder than we ever imagined it would,’ said chef Robin Gill in the announcement on Instagram. The Dairy fast became a neighbourhood favourite and we loved the spin-off so much that we awarded it five stars when it launched in 2016. The good news? A new branch has already arrived in Bermondsey. Phew!

When it reopened after lockdown on July 17 2020, Dinerama announced it would be for a final ten-week stint before closing for good, saying it had been forced to shut after failing to agree a deal with the landlords. The Shoreditch street-food mecca will be remembered for raising the profile of many of the most popular London street-food traders – Breddos and Smokestak included – as well as for its epic late-night parties and bank holiday benders.

World-famous pastry chef Dominique Ansel packed up his piping kit and left the UK. The cronut creator first opened a bakery on our shores in 2016, to much hype. He’d made his name with the croissant-doughnut hybrid in New York and it didn’t take long for the sweet treat to take on a cult status here, too – along with fellow pastry creation the DKA. The Victoria branch of the bakery closed, along with Ansel’s second launch, the Treehouse in Covent Garden.

The owners of The Quality Chop House and Clipstone announced their sadness to have to cut Emilia away from their pack of restaurants. The Italian spot had only opened at Mayfair auction house Bonhams in 2019. ‘It was a great honour to operate in the site and we were humbled by the opportunity given to us by the Bonhams team and the warm welcome we received from all of them while there,’ said co-founder Will Lander in a statement.

The rustic and ever-cool Italian restaurant Forza Win will no longer live on in Peckham’s Copeland Park. Rather than dwell on the negatives, the announcement on Instagram from the restaurant’s team said it was on the lookout for a new site for the concept to live on. Forza Win, after all, began its life as a pop-up supper club. Plus, those keen for its signature Italian eats can still find them just around the corner at sibling rooftop bar Forza Wine.

Okay, so our Food editor didn’t exactly love The Frog when first visiting in 2016, but many Time Out readers left reviews on our website waxing lyrical about the first solo outing from ‘MasterChef: The Professionals’ finalist Adam Handling, with its dizzying experimental culinary twists and turns. It announced that it wouldn’t be reopening its Hoxton location, but its Covent Garden site should remain in business.

Five stars from Time Out and two stars of the Michelin variety couldn’t halt the closure of this Mayfair titan. The restaurant’s executive chef Alex Dilling took to Instagram in early June 2020 to announce the sad news that The Greenhouse would be no more. ‘It is with great sadness I confirm the Greenhouse Mayfair will not be reopening,’ he said. Yet another sign of the hit this moneyed part of London is taking from the crisis.

2020 truly was the wurst. Sausage peddler Herman ze German announced on Instagram that they’d been hit hard by the year’s events and would be closing their London outlets with immediate effect. ‘Knowing that Brexit will follow at the end of this year we had no other choice but to pull the plug,’ added its founders. The first branch of HZG arrived on Villiers Street in 2010, and its formula of currywurst and German beer spawned three further sites in Soho, Fitzrovia and White City. Now, just the German arm of the operation is left standing.

Jason Atherton’s Victoria-based pizza joint is another restaurant victim, along with its upstairs bar The Drunken Oyster. The restaurant group confirmed to Time Out that the pizzeria in the area’s shiny Nova development wouldn’t be reopening to the public after lockdown.

A legendary Jewish restaurant and deli in St John’s Wood, Harry Morgan was one of London's oldest dining establishments. Opening way back in 1948, the fact that it closed in April 2021 was all the more upsetting due to its historical significance. Famous for its salf beef sarnies, chicken soup and latkes, a reported rent dispute was behind the closure. 

Hanging out in east London’s hippest lobby is no more: The Ace Hotel won’t be reopening in Shoreditch, with its American owners taking to Instagram to share the news in September. Their statement more than hinted at another Ace London in the not-too-distant future: ‘As our first hotel outside the US, it was built as an open satellite for the extraordinary energy ignited by the city itself. We fell in love with that energy, and we’re excited to build a new home in London in the hopeful, renewed future,’ it said. But for now, its farewell to the hotel, along with its stylish restaurant and popular brunch spot Hoi Polloi.

In October 2020, Eater London reported that long-standing Chinatown fave Hung’s restaurant appeared to have closed down. Serving dishes such as roast duck (seen hanging seductively in the window), ho fun (flat noodles with beef) and popular beef-tripe noodle soup since it opened in 2000, the restaurant is one of many places in the central London district to have suffered due to the lockdowns, not helped by early prejudice surrounding the supposed Chinese origins of the virus. 

London’s cherished cocktail bar inside a pie-and-mash shop sadly won’t be returning. The pop-up bar Time Out had awarded five stars to announced in August 2020 that it wouldn’t be making a comeback to L Manze’s on Walthamstow High Street. During lockdown, the bar had great success delivering its range of bottled cocktails. In the announcement, its founder suggested it was on the lookout for a fitting new venue – but it’s hard to imagine it finding another as unique.

Fancy Mayfair restaurant Indian Accent admits that the flossiness of its setting – one of the reasons it was such an exciting place to dine – is also partly to blame for its closure. The business announced on its website in June that it will close permanently due to financial contraints, saying it was ‘deeply saddened’ by the move. ‘Social distancing would reduce the restaurant capacity to just 30 covers. This combined with the significant fixed costs as a result of operating on one of the most expensive streets in the world and the general economic uncertainty in the UK, means that the business is unviable at its current location.’

2020 can stick it! Another fatality on the London restaurant scene was Dalston yakatori joint Jidori. The Kingsland High Street restaurant closed its doors in August after four-and-a-half years in the ’hood. ‘It has been a blast but this global pandemic has proven a bit too much for our small shop,’ said the team on Instagram. A spin-off branch of Jidori in Covent Garden opened in 2018, only to close the following year. So it’s farewell to what our reviewer described as ‘the best karaage I’ve had in London’. 

Kapihan was an artisanal Filipino café in Battersea run by two brothers who swapped the corporate world for the coffee world. Applying European techniques to Southeast Asian staples, Kapihan (meaning ‘coffee house’ in Tagalog) it served brews plus freshly baked sweet and savoury Filipino pastries. 

Sadly, having successfully navigated Covid, the café announced that it would close for good on November 1 2021, following a legal dispute with the new owner of the site, whom it describes on Instagram as a ‘b******d’. 

At the end of September, Kym’s – the Bloomberg Arcade spot from Michelin-starred chef Andrew Wong – took to Twitter to let Londoners know it wouldn’t be returning. We’ll be sad to see the last of Chinese small plates and street-food-influenced eats we described as ‘frickin’ ace’ and awarded four stars to.

Michelin-starred spot and Time Out favourite The Ledbury was one of many fine dining restaurants that’s struggled to find a way around social distancing. The Notting Hill haunt announced at the start of June 2020 that it has no plans to reopen with head chef Brett Graham saying he didn’t want to put anybody at risk. The business is said to be keeping the lease on the site for now. In 2019 we said that ‘dishes from Aussie chef Brett Graham are as close to perfection on a plate as you’ll get in this town.’ So we’re definitely holding out for a future Ledbury in some form.

Loyal Tavern was great – a gastropub but not pretentious or annoyingly fancy. It simply pumped out some seriously great grub, but in March 2020 it was game over. Thankfully, loyal fans of Loyal Tavern can still sample chef Tom Cenci’s deft cooking, as he’s now cheffing over at Stoney Street for the time being. ‘I’m not sure what the future will hold for me now, but I’d like to say a huge thank you to all the team at Loyal Tavern, all of whom I would happily recommend for work and to all the guests who had the chance to dine with us. Thank you for your support,’ he said on Instagram, announcing the closure. We look forward to seeing what’s next.  

With ‘a heavy heart’, Mayfair’s homely Indian restaurant broke the news of its closure to its followers on Instagram. ‘Because of the catastrophic extent to which it has affected the entire hospitality industry, we are sadly unable to reopen in a safe and financially viable way, and have therefore made the difficult decision to close,’ it said. The restaurant, a sister to Dum Biryani, had drawn its inspiration from north India’s Uttar Pradesh – Lucknow being its capital.

Don’t worry: you can’t keep a Dead Hippie down (not in a vommy sense). Meat Liquor will continue business at its other London branches. But for its tucked-away King’s Cross branch, it was last orders just before Lockdown 2. At the time, the Time Out office was just over the road, so we felt the loss quite keenly – but with many offices in the area closed and with the restaurant’s slightly hidden location down narrow alleyway St Chad’s Place, it’s easy to understand how a drop in footfall took its toll. There’s good news, though. Meat Liquor is opening a branch in Bloomsbury’s Brunswick Centre to compensate.

Raise a glass to this legendary bar Soho speakeasy Milk & Honey, which has called last orders. It reopened in July to customers and members, but with the shock announcement that it would be closing for good after its final ten-week stint of service – and that’s after 18 years in business. Bar owner Jonathan Downey cited the lack of a rent freeze or reduction from landlords as the cause for the cocktail joint’s closure. The bar was fundamental in establishing the speakeasy trend in London and trained many of the capital’s best cocktail makers.

One of the first wine bars to fall, The Mountgrove Bothy in Highbury announced it would no longer be pouring one out for its locals. Like many wine bars during lockdown, the Bothychanged its business model to suit at-home imbibing, offering delivery of its wine supplies to those within a one-mile radius, and stocking its physical shelves with deli items as well as the vino. But alas, the bar announced on Instagram that it has poured its last glass and it is now ‘time to move on’.

A fish restaurant in East Dulwich, right next door to its very own fishmongers. The restaurant closed in July.

Oklava had only just opened the bakery spin-off to its Turkish-Cypriot restaurant when lockdown happened. Co-founders Selin Kiazim and Laura Christie decided to keep the small café-meets-wine-bar closed ‘for the foreseeable future’. Kiazim told followers on Instagram that footfall in central London was too low to remain open. Luckily, parent restaurant Oklava is back open again.

The chiefs behind legendary pastie shop Piebury Corner announced ‘heartbreaking’ news to followers that it wouldn’t be reopening. The pie shop had been a favourite of Arsenal fans for years (Ian Wright sent his condolences upon hearing the news), first operating as a stall on match days in 2011 before flourishing as a full-fledged café for the Holloway Road area a year later. One ray of hope: the deli suggested it might return to its humble roots as a pie stall near the stadium.

Small, arty café and furniture shop, which also sold its own homemade jams, chutneys and more. Declared that it was ‘the end’ at the very start of lockdown

Along with Le Caprice, the Greenwich branch of Richard Caring’s Rivington restaurants won’t be making a comeback. The place was known for its modern bistro dishes, lengthy gin menu and an outdoor dining space fit for these times – which perhaps makes its decision to close all the more sad for Greenwich coming out the other side of lockdown.

Oh, how we liked Margot Henderson's Rochelle Bar and Canteen at the ICA, a swish dining room serving modern British fare upstairs and downstairs a casual café where people worked and lunched with laptops. It felt like a lovely London secret – kind of like your local library, but much cooler. And with pies. It is now no more, sadly. Thankfully the original Rochelle outpost in Shoreditch made it through the wilderness. Established in 2004 by Henderson and Melanie Arnold, it’s in the converted bike shed of an old school. And we all know that the fun stuff happened by the bike sheds. 

The London spin-off of Simon Rogan’s Lake District hideaway of L’Enclume – which holds two Michelin stars – Roganic closed in December 2020. This was apparently down to relocation plans, which had been on the table since 2019. As such, we look forward to its return, because the tiny, technical food on offer here was always an utter delight. 

Run by TV mainstay Michel Roux Jr, this fine-dining restaurant serving up a seasonal modern-European menu announced its closure in early December. A statement on its website said that the restaurant’s permanent closure was a result of the businesses suffering ‘during this incredibly difficult year’ and the ‘ongoing uncertainty ahead’. Roux’s other restaurants include Le Gavroche, which reopened prior to the Tier 3 restrictions introduced in December 2020, and Roux at The Landau. 

Alex Jackson and Stevie Parle’s dream of a Hoxton restaurant announced in June – just shy of the restaurant’s fourth birthday – that it wouldn’t be returning. So it’s a sad goodbye to home-style Provençal dishes and Viognier on tap. ‘For our small space any kind of social distancing would be very difficult to implement and we do not have the resources to trade through the inevitably difficult times ahead,’ said the restaurant’s co-founders in a statement to customers.

Known for buzzing happy hours and good times in the middle of Brixton Village market, shabby-chic Seven at Brixton closed its doors after nine years in business. It said on Instagram that without agreeing a new contract with landlords, the bar would not be reopening with the rest of London hospitality. Sister bars Three Eight Four (also in Brixton) and Two Hundred Rye Lane in Peckham have thankfully made a return.

After 37 years in the biz, Hoxton’s Shepherdess Café has served its final fry-up. The greasy spoon was known for its gaudy green decor, full english breakfasts and steak-and-kidney pies. Celebrity customers included 1990s girl band All Saints, Barry from ‘EastEnders’ and Jamie Oliver. The caff put its closure down to ‘a lack of sympathy from agents and landlords’ when announcing the news on its Facebook page.

An old-school London hotel like The Goring won’t let a thing like a pandemic bring it down. But its modern restaurant, fronted by acclaimed seafood chef Nathan Outlaw, sadly didn’t get a chance to stand the test of time. It was the first new restaurant to open at the Goring in 109 years when it arrived in 2019, but the hotel confirmed there will be no more of its crab tarts and lobster fritters when The Goring got back on its feet. ‘Due to the situation that all of us in UK hospitality find ourselves in, we are going to have to operate differently for a while in order to protect the business and its staff in the long term. For this reason, when we eventually reopen the Goring it will be with a smaller food and beverage department, and very sadly we will not be able to reopen Siren,’ said hotel owner Jeremy Goring.

Ealing institution Atari-Ya bowed out after 30 years in the game. The unassuming restaurant had a strong reputation for high-quality old-school sushi, with expertly prepared lesser-spotted fish varieties as the proof. Although branches in Marylebone (now named Sushiology) and Golders Green survive it, it’s still very bad news for west Londoners. Its closure was reported by Eater London, who spotted a ‘Let Agreed’ sign above its shuttered doors back in October 2020.

Tea bar (yes, it’s a thing) and café Teatulia shared news that it wouldn’t be reopening its Covent Garden store on social media. ‘Under the current climate, we are finding it impossible to operate at our premium-rent Covent Garden store,’ it said on Instagram. It will continue selling its posh products online, but for now it’s goodbye to tea-infused cocktails and a very peaceful bevvy in the heart of town.

If you wanted to find out what the whole natural wine thing was all about, then for the past 13 years you had to pay a visit to Terroirs. No more. London’s OG natural wine bar, a tucked-away paradise in the middle of town, has closed its doors for ever. Fans will be happy to know that its East Dulwich location remains open, with plenty of varieties offered by the glass. 

Marylebone’s Michelin-starred and Scandi-influenced kitchen and champagne bar Texture bid adieu to London after 13 years – and plenty of accolades. It was one of the first restaurants to announce its permanent closure as a result of the crisis back in May 2020. Its chef-owner Agnar Sverrisson told Bloomberg’s Richard Vines that the restaurant would not be reopening after lockdown and that he had returned to his native Iceland.

London’s veggies had already had to contend with the loss of Vanilla Black (see below), but there’ was a further blow. In September 2020, Tibits announced the permanent closure of its two London sites in Mayfair and Bankside. The small Swiss chain and plant-based pioneers arrived in the UK 12 years ago, but it will now focus on their operations in Switzerland and elsewhere. The founders left this message of positivity to followers on social media: ‘Now more than ever, food has the power to change the world. We hope you’ll visit us at our restaurants in Switzerland and Germany so we can continue this mission together.’

Not even superhero sprinter Usain Bolt has managed to successfully navigate 2020. His Spitalfields restaurant shut up shop for good, according to the Evening Standard. The first Tracks and Records venture outside of Jamaica, T&R London launched in 2018, bringing with it rum cocktails, live sets from dub and reggae DJs and Jamaican plates – something we could all do with more of right now.

Back in April 2020, Mark Hix’s restaurant empire went into administration. While other restaurants in the Hix group had already closed at the start of the year, the news means that Tramshed (famous for its whole roast chicken and Damien Hirst formaldehyde cow), Hixter Bankside and Hix Oyster and Chophouse wouldn’t be returning after lockdown. ‘Apart from tough times and sad times for me, it is nothing compared to what so many of my team, and others that are reliant on our business, are going through,’ said Hix on Instagram in typically robust fashion.

After months in lockdown, this Shoreditch eatery reopened in September with a new menu, going back to founder Chase Lovecky’s Maine roots and serving up American classics with a twist. Sadly, its revival was short-lived, as the restaurant announced its closure in a post on Instagram in November. In our original review of Two Lights, which was a sister restaurant to the Michelin-starred The Clove Club, we said it ‘combines unconventional cooking with being as carefree and unstuffy as you can get’. We’re real sad to see it go.

Long before the capital’s vegetarian and vegan restaurant scene had truly taken off, Vanilla Black was doing things to the humble vegetable that you’d never have dreamed of. But sadly, after 16 years in the game, the restaurant confirmed its closure in September. ‘As a small independent restaurant which has traded for 16 years, the effects of the last few months have been immensely devastating,’ said its owners on Vanilla Black’s website. They’re yet to rule out a comeback, but for now it’s farewell to its faithful Holborn site.

Celebrities are feeling the full force of the crisis, too. Mark Wahlberg won’t be reopening the one and only UK outpost of his family burger chain Wahlburgers, which only arrived on these shores in May 2019. There was speculation towards the end of last year that the Covent Garden branch was in trouble, despite original plans for a UK-wide rollout of the chain. Since then, it’s been confirmed that the restaurant won’t be making a comeback. ‘Our franchisee had to make the difficult decision to close this location due to the financial impacts of the pandemic on the restaurant industry, as well as the uncertainty of consumer behaviour post-pandemic in a location such as this,’ said the group in a statement.