Owsley-Brown to open Norfolk restaurant

Head chef Matthew Owsley-Brown is leaving the Noble Rot restaurant in Mayfair, London, to open a restaurant in Norfolk.

He and his wife, Caroline, have bought the 42-seat Fishes restaurant in Burnham Market and will move there with their two young sons at the end of the month. He described the decision to leave London as a "lifestyle move".

The couple will open Fishes on 9 September. In January it will close for a three-week, £20,000 refurbishment.

Owsley-Brown was reluctant to say how much he paid, but the asking price was £400,000.

He has spent the past two years as head chef/manager of the 60-seat Noble Rot (Caterer, 10 February 2000, page 46). Before that he was head chef at Harvey Nichols' Fifth Floor restaurant in London, and in the mid-1990s he worked for chef and restaurateur Rick Stein in Padstow, Cornwall.

He believes his move to Norfolk will have echoes of his Cornish stint. He said: "I am fond of seafood, and the raw materials in Norfolk, such as Brancaster oysters and Cromer crabs, are fantastic. The set-up is very similar to Rick's in Padstow, only it's much quicker to get to Norfolk from London."