El Rincón closes after six months

Claudio Pulze and Raj Sharma's Spanish-style El Rincón restaurant in London has closed six months after it opened.

El Rincón, the fifth in the pair's London-based Cuisine Collection restaurant group, is on the site of the former Pond Street restaurant in Pond Place, Chelsea.

It closed last Thursday, and is expected to reopen with a different name and a different style of food.

A Cuisine Collection spokes-man said: "After Easter they (Sharma and Pulze) will be looking to see if they need to change the concept because perhaps El Rincón is not working as well as they wanted it to."

The 70-seat restaurant opened in October. In December its basement kitchen was flooded and the restaurant was closed during the month while work was carried out to repair the damage.

There were about seven staff at El Rincón, who will be kept on in the new restaurant.