Companies battle it out at Cardiff Bay
By Angela Jameson
A joint venture between a Welsh artist and a restaurateur from the USA will be the latest pub-restaurant development on the Cardiff Bay waterfront when it opens next month.
Barbara Grela, owner of the Dead End Saloon in Baltimore for the past 20 years, is to open a second Dead End Saloon in Cardiff Bay's Bute Crescent with artist John Allinson.
The two are investing about £250,000 in the project.
Opening on 20 July, the 70-seat venture will include a traditional American ground- floor bar and restaurant, and an upstairs waterfront-themed bar and restaurant, the Sand Dollar.
"This is a fast-growing area; within five years we expect it will attract two million visitors a year," said Mr Allinson.
Menus on both floors will offer traditional American food, including New Orleans Gumbo, Maryland Crab Cakes and Oklahoma Corn Chilli. The Sand Dollar will specialise in seafood.
An American-style deck is also planned for the back of the restaurant, which will be used in summer as a music and cocktail bar.
The restaurant will face stiff competition, however. Bass has invested £1m on a pub just doors away from the Dead End Saloon. It is due to open in September.
A second investment of £1m planned for Bass's Big Windsor pub is subject to planning permission.
Cardiff Bay Development Corporation has also accepted an offer on the 19th century Pilotage House. A local business consortium plans to develop it into an upmarket restaurant.
The two-storey building will open next spring, subject to planning consent.
Whitbread is opening a Brewers Fayre pub and a 40-bed Travel Inn at the Ocean Park business area on 17 July. While Morland, the Oxfordshire-based brewery, begins work next month on a new-build Artist's Fare pub-restaurant at Penarth Haven, due to open next February.
