Tom Aikens confirms plans for a ‘posh' Chelsea chippy
Chef Tom Aikens has confirmed plans to open an upmarket, eco-friendly fish-and-chip restaurant in London's Chelsea in late summer.
The yet-to-be-named restaurant will be Aikens's third on Chelsea's Cale Street, where both his Tom Aikens and Tom's Kitchen restaurants are located.
The site, formerly Monkey's Restaurant, will be refurbished and renovated to include a 60-seat restaurant on the first floor and a take-away on the ground floor.
A spokeswoman for Aikens said: "Tom is focusing on making the restaurant as green and as eco-friendly as possible. It will use sustainable fish, but he is also looking at everything else, from the design of the restaurant down to the packaging used for the take-away."
Sustainable fish was in the headlines last week when supermarket chain Asda announced plans to stop stocking monkfish and criticised some of the UK's best-known chefs for offering it on their menus.
Restaurants named as environmental "sinners" included Gordon Ramsay‘s Savoy Grill, La Noisette and Claridge's, Rick Stein's restaurants, Jean-Christophe Novelli's A touch of Novelli and Jamie Oliver‘s Fifteen.
But Nathan de Rozarieux, Seafood Cornwall project director, hit back at Asda. "People such as Stein and Oliver source their monkfish from sustainable sources in Cornwall and there is no shortage of the fish in the area," he said. "It's a cynical cheap shot, which sends out the wrong message and Asda should really have checked its facts because statements like this can be quite damaging."