Blunos closes Lettonie after 13 years
One of the West Country's most prestigious restaurants has closed its doors after 13 years.
Chef Martin Blunos has shut the two-Michelin-starred Lettonie in Bath, which he opened in 1997 after trading for nine years under the same name in Bristol.
The closure comes only five months after Blunos was appointed as consultant by Chase Hotels to oversee the restaurant at its newly refurbished Dukes hotel in Bath. It also comes amid a blossoming TV career for the chef, with his distinctive handlebar moustache.
Advanced booking for Lettonie from tourist parties from the USA and Japan are thought to have been hit by the foot-and-mouth outbreak, and trade was expected to be further reduced following the World Trade Center attacks in New York.
Blunos has not revealed his plans, but he and his wife, Sian, and their three children are expected to stay in the Bath area.
Gidleigh Park in Devon is now the region's only two-Michelin-starred restaurant.
Blunos is the second of Bath's best-known restaurateurs to leave the trade in less than a year. Frenchman Phillipe Roy, who ran the Clos du Roy restaurant in the city centre for nearly a decade, swapped his chef's whites for a suit last November to run In Focus, a training and recruitment consultancy for the catering industry (Caterer, 11 November 2000, page 10).
