Restaurants merge at Peyton's place
Restaurateur Oliver Peyton has scrapped the Osteria d'Isola separate fine-dining room at 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 downstairs and replaced them with a "Manhattan-style" bar called Iso-Bar.
Peyton admitted that having two restaurants in Knightsbridge with a bar downstairs had not been a "great long-term concept". He added: "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 and 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, he said.
The Iso-Bar, which opened last week, will offer 64 wines by the glass and a 350-strong wine list as well as cocktails. There is also a long bar, DJ booth and Italian style antipasti bar.
by Nic Paton