Restaurateur Oliver Peyton has scrapped the separate fine-dining
restaurant, Osteria d’Isola, above his Restaurant Isola in London’s
Knightsbridge.
Instead of the two restaurants one on top of the other,
Peyton has now merged Osteria d’Isola with Restaurant Isola and put a
“Manhattan-style” bar in its place. The new bar will be called Iso-Bar.
Peyton admitted the reality of having two restaurants in
Knightsbridge with a bar downstairs had not been a “great long-term concept”.
He said: “The problem before was that a lot of our customers
expected to have a drink, go to dinner and then go back to the bar and they
could not do that.”
Merging the two restaurants had meant losing between five to
10 seats, but staff numbers had increased from 48 to 60, mostly to service the
bar.
The two styles of cooking in the restaurant had also been
merged to give a more unified contemporary Italian feel, Peyton said.
The Iso-Bar, which opens tonight, will offer 64 different
wines by the glass and a 350-strong wine list as well as wide range of
cocktails. There is also a long bar, DJ booth and “Italian-style” antipasti
bar.
by Nic Paton