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Restaurants in London stay the course
Ruth Bloomfield20.08.09
London's restaurants are surviving the recession with the lowest rate of closures in almost a decade.
Research shows 64 closed in the past 12 months - more than one a week, but still the smallest number since 2000.
And 121 new restaurants opened in the same period, an eight per cent increase on the year before. They include Murano in Mayfair, opened by Gordon Ramsay protégée Angela Hartnett, and the St Pancras Grand, which serves traditional British food on the concourse of the Eurostar terminal.
Big casualties included Marco Pierre White's Drones in Belgravia, Richard Corrigan's Lindsay House in Soho and Ubon in Canary Wharf, set up by the team behind Nobu.
Peter Harden, co-publisher of Harden's London Restaurants, which carried out the research, said: "Everyone, including us, thought that London's restaurants were in for a bloodbath in 2009 but it just didn't happen."
Mr Harden said many restaurateurs had offered cheap deals, and added: "One of the more important reasons may be that most restaurant-going Londoners are still in employment."
This autumn Aqua will open on the top floor of the former Dickens & Jones store in Regent Street, St John and Hacksaw are planning major ventures in the West End, and chef Mark Hix is to open an eponymous restaurant in Soho this year.
The 19th edition of Harden's London Restaurants is published next month, £11.99.
