The butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker

CODE founder Adam Hyman looks to the future of the high street and the importance of restaurants in society 

I found myself sitting in The Wolseley on Wednesday morning. Lockdown had lifted and London was now back in Tier 2 – albeit under stricter rules than before. However, hospitality was allowed to reopen and start welcoming guests back in again. The Corbin & King restaurant was nicely buzzing for breakfast service. There was a mixture of suits meeting for business and couples who’d clearly decided an eggs Benedict at the Piccadilly grand cafe was how they were going to celebrate the end of lockdown. 

As I enjoyed my first meal back in a restaurant in a month – there’s something so civilised about a solo breakfast with the morning papers, a chance to gather your thoughts for the day – the large Christmas tree that always holds court for the month of December above the clock in The Wolseley reminded me that not only are we nearing the end of 2020 (a year we’ll all like to see the back of) but just how important the twelfth month of the year is to hospitality. 

It’s clear that ‘silly season’ isn’t going to be as silly this year. Work Christmas parties, festive drinks with groups of friends and just the general merriment of Christmas is going to have wait another year. The mulled wine, the awful Christmas jumpers and pigs in blankets all miss out in 2020. We’ll have to wait to see what the ultimate damage of this will be to our industry, but we’d all be naïve to think that going into 2021 is going to be easy. 

But yet, my inbox this week has seen a welcome flurry of press releases announcing new openings in London. The Nobu hotel in Portman Square opened its doors on Thursday, as did Sylvia’s – a new restaurant from Ruth Rogers and the River Café team in the former meeting rooms of the Richard Rogers Architect firm that sit next to the famous Hammersmith restaurant. A smattering of other new restaurants opening their doors this week not only shows our industry’s resilience, but the fact that out of situations like the one we’re in come opportunities. 

As news broke this week about more high street retail casualties, what is the make-up of our high streets going to look like in 2021? Swathes of real estate are going to be sitting vacant and who is going to take it? Ironically restaurateurs have had to learn how to become retailers this year and hopefully landlords have realised that they can’t have it all their way. But while retail seems ever more set to be dominated by Amazon and online, I still think hospitality will be the saviour of the high street. We just need to find the right economics and new business model to make it all work. 

Jeremy King sent out a newsletter for his restaurants this week and in it he talked about the ‘conviviality of community’. I’ll leave you with his quote that makes you realise the importance of restaurants to society. “We cannot exist and thrive without each other. I believe that restaurants are conductors of that conviviality and that is what makes them special places in all communities.”  

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