City Bar Linked to Chef Jason Atherton Has Closed, Pizza Restaurant Will Open [Updated]

A second restaurant associated with chef-restaurateur Jason Atherton has closed in the space of a week. Temple and Sons — next to Tower 42 in the City — has ceased trading, according to reports from MCA this morning. It follows news that Sosharu, Atherton’s Japanese izakaya in Clerkenwell, closed 10 days ago, with plans for a relocation. The reservations line at Temple and Sons is no longer taking calls, with a recorded message inviting callers to leave a message.

Eater London has since learned that the site will be taken by Pizza Pilgrims, the restaurant that started life as a truck and now has six sites across the city — one of London’s essential pizza restaurants.

Temple and Sons opened in November 2016, with a deli and bar on the ground floor and a dining room upstairs. The restaurant was a sibling of City Social, Atherton’s Michelin-starred restaurant inside Tower 42, and designed to offer a laid-back but complementary experience. On opening, Atherton said, “Temple and Sons is my tribute to our bountiful British produce and dining traditions.” He also told the Evening Standard that the new restaurant was designed to be “Brexit-proof,” using 90-95 percent British ingredients.

This morning Atherton told Eater London that, under him, the restaurant closed over a year ago. “I was consulting for Compass [the hospitality catering company] and it was better as a bar so I didn’t consult anymore... I haven’t been involved for over a year. I believe it’s now a pizza place,” he said. Atherton’s official website still lists Temple and Sons under “Social Events” as part of The Social Company that he co-runs with his wife, Irha Atherton. It is available for private or semi-private hire and advertises a menu featuring British ingredients, small and large plates. But no pizza.

Asked whether his restaurant group The Social Company retained any interest in the bar at all, Atherton said, “no” and that he and his company had merely been “helping out our partner Compass, who have been amazing.”

Restaurant Associates commented: “In order to focus on other areas of our ongoing partnership, we have taken the decision to close Temple and Sons. We are firm believers in chef and restaurant partnerships, championing exciting opportunities and we’re looking forward to our continued work at Michelin-starred City Social and throughout other areas of the Restaurant Associates business.”

• Atherton’s Temple & Sons closes [MCA/Paywall]

Updated 09.08.2018, 11:10, with the news that Pizza Pilgrims will take the former Temple and Sons site.