The Wolseley might yet become an international brand

Corbin & King has an ultimate vision “to put The Wolseley restaurant and hotel in every major capital city around the world,” the managing director Zuleika Fennell said at Propel’s Women’s Entrepreneurs and Leaders Conference last week.

The restaurant group, one of the UK’s leading lights in hospitality, is most famous for its big, brasserie-style restaurants, of which The Wolseley is probably the most prized. The Delaunay, Colbert, and the still incomparably priced Brasserie Zédel do not lag too far behind in terms of valued concept.

Currently, The Wolseley has just one other sister location, the more casual offshoot Café Wolseley in Bicester Village, Oxfordshire. Could it be that this opening was testing the waters on a micro-scale for the international plans Fennell says the group has?

We know nothing will materialise any time soon.

Corbin & King has three further sites in London already in the works. The first is the seafood restaurant Manzi’s in Soho, which we understand is nearing completion; a “big, Wolseley-esque brasserie” in the city; and a “Colbert-esque, neighbourhood community restaurant” in Notting Hill. Fennell said these are the company’s main priorities now as each project has already been pushed back due to pandemic-related delays.

But seeing The Wolseley, itself now an institution, stretch from its home in Piccadilly to some of Europe’s most charming cities would be no bad thing, we feel.

Read more industry news here