London openings look to the old and the new

One of London's most traditional restaurants reopened this week, at the same time as the debut of one of the city's most avant garde eating establishments.

The 19th-century Café Royal grill room in Regent Street opened on Monday at the same time as Sketch in Conduit Street, the long-awaited restaurant involving restaurateur Mourad Mazouz and three-Michelin-starred chef Pierre Gagnaire.

The Café Royal building is operated by Le Méridien, but the grill room has been sub-leased to the three businessmen who already operate the Elysium club and Ku De Ta bar on the site.

Neville Mody, one of the three, said that the latest version of the grill room is intended to recapture the past glories of the famous restaurant, described by Cecil Beaton as "the most beautiful room in London".

Sketch, in the old Christian Dior building in Conduit Street, is seven months late and £5m over budget, a delay put down to structural work that needed to be done to the old building.

Gagnaire has created the food, estimated to cost £100 a head, in the 45-seat fine-dining section of the restaurant, which is called the Lecture Room and Library.