Rhodes and Sodexho part as restaurants close

Celebrity chef Gary Rhodes is parting company with contract caterer Sodexho after it announced that it was shutting down its standalone restaurant business.

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Rhodes, who has worked with Sodexho running two Rhodes & Co restaurants, a City Rhodes and Rhodes in the Square restaurant since 1997, said that he was leaving to "further my business and personal interests elsewhere".

Sodexho said it had decided to shut down the restaurants after a strategic review of the company deemed them not part of its "core business".

The group said the City Rhodes restaurant in London's Holborn would close at the end of March and that the Rhodes in the Square restaurant at the Dolphin Square hotel in Pimlico, London, would continue to operate under Rhodes' guidance until the end of May, after which Sodexho would run the restaurant itself.

The two Rhodes & Co restaurants both closed in 2002 - Rhodes & Co Edinburgh in February and Rhodes & Co Manchester in November.

Sodexho denied reports that it had "poured millions" into the restaurants, but would not disclose figures.