Great British Chef Rowley Leigh Leaves Restaurant at the Design Museum

Rowley Leigh — one of London’s great British chefs — has announced that he is no longer involved with the restaurant, Parabola, at the Design Museum.

Responding to a query on Twitter this morning about changes to opening times at the restaurant, Leigh said, plainly: “I have nothing to do with that place now I’m afraid.”

He was unable to comment further when contacted by Eater this lunchtime.

It was in September last year that Leigh took over the kitchen at the Peter Prescott, Sir Terence and Vicki Conran-owned space.

At the time Leigh had told Eater that he has “been working with [Prescott and Conran] since last year, as a consultant and guest chef. I told [them] I thought instead of being an event venue we should run it as a conventional restaurant with plenty of choice. And they said, ‘Well, if that’s the case, then you better do it!’”

Leigh was direct when asked what the restaurant would be like. “We’re not going to be strong-arming people into spending a lot of money. It’s not a new bao concept or this, that or the other. It’s just straightforward cooking.”

Leigh’s takeover of Parabola was greeted with enthusiasm in the industry. It was 2014 when his last solo project, Le Cafe Anglais, in the upstairs of Whiteleys shopping centre in Queensway in Notting Hill, had closed. Last year, Leigh also told Eater that he had parted company with the Soho House Group — with whom he had been working with as a consultant chef and helped to launch their restaurant, Cafe Monico on Shaftesbury Avenue in 2016.