Owners of London Steak Empire Will Close Chiswick Neighbourhood Restaurant

The owners of the chain of Foxlow and Hawksmoor steak restaurants have today announced that they will close the Chiswick branch of the former brand after Sunday lunch this coming weekend. It is one of four operating Foxlow sites, which opened in October 2015.

Co-owner Will Beckett said: “We have decided to close Foxlow Chiswick. Although we’ve loved running the restaurant, and know that a good many people took it to their hearts and became regulars, we haven’t been able to make it work.

“We wanted to be a great neighbourhood restaurant and while we think we succeeded in that, financially it just didn’t work for us in Chiswick. Wherever possible we hope we can keep Chiswick customers and staff at Soho, Balham and Clerkenwell — we’re in the process of finding positions for the entire Chiswick team in our other restaurants.”

It is the second time Gott and Beckett have decided to cut their losses on a Foxlow site — in January last year, the duo closed a branch on Stoke Newington Church Street, having opened it in April 2015. At the time, Beckett was candid, admitting that “we’re not making any excuses about the wider trading environment or anything else — we made a couple of poor decisions and just didn’t get everything as right here as we thankfully have at all our other restaurants.”

A new branch did subsequently open on Lower James Street in Soho in May last year.

Beckett and Gott also run six Hawksmoor (a more expensive, up-market brand than the more casual, and neighbourhood-y Foxlow) restaurants in London, as well as one in Manchester. There are plans in the pipeline to open in both Edinburgh and New York.