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The ill-fated office and restaurant development that straddles the City of London and Shoreditch has seen its one surviving restaurant close. L’Anima Cafe, which has been the only operational restaurant and bar at the base of the Broadgate Quarter office block for the past month, is now no more. It follows the owner Peter Marano’s subsuming of his other restaurant, L’Anima into the space, in March.
Bloomberg restaurant writer Richard Vines, who was a great supporter of the original L’Anima, shared images of a notice posted to L’Anima Cafe’s window, as well as a bailiffs possession notice. It outlines that the “landlord had exercised their right to instruct certified bailiffs to peaceably re-enter and take possession of the premises...This property is now legally occupied by the landlords.”
When contacted by Earlier this month, Marano addressed rumours of the restaurant’s closure, saying that the “situation was fluid.” But it seems L’Anima Cafe has subsequently met the same fate as Darbaar, chef Abdul Yaseen’s high-end Indian restaurant in the quarter, which Eater reported had closed in May.
Before the original L’Anima closed in March, Japanese fine-dining restaurant Chrysan — by the well-established Hakkassan group — departed the quarter in 2013. (It had been on that site that Darbaar had operated.) HKK, a high-end Chinese restaurant, also part of the Hakkassan group, opened in 2012 before announcing its own sudden closure in October last year, citing a focus on global expansion.
Marano has not responded to Eater’s request for comment, but speaking about the closure of L’Anima in March, he said that in addition to the much-publicised perfect storm of rent rises and increased competition, it was Government legislation impacting expenses accounts and client entertaining in the financial sector that was as much to blame for the downturn in business.
He had said that his move to consolidate the two businesses in March had been done to “make [the business] sustainable for the long-term.”
It is not yet known whether there are any plans to replace any of the four vacant sites with restaurants in the future.