Highly Ambitious Portuguese Restaurant Goes Into Liquidation [Updated]

Updated 11:52a.m., 28 February 2019, with details of the restaurant’s liquidation.

Londrino, the debut restaurant from acclaimed chef Leandro Carreira, will close in Bermondsey on 28 February, according to communications between the restaurant and customers. The restaurant, whose ambitious “Portuguese cooking with a London lens” divided critics, and produced some of the city’s best ice cream, opened at the end of November 2017.

The parent company, Restaurant Londrino Ltd, has sent a letter dated 25 February to creditors advising on the process of liquidation. The letter states that “The Board of the Company, having regard to its financial position, have decided to commence liquidation proceedings.”

Carreira debuted the restaurant in a neo-industrial Bermondsey dining room following a residency at coffee roaster Climpson and Sons’ arch in London Fields. Carreira’s Portuguese background dovetailed with his restaurant experience at Londrino: time spent at two-Michelin-starred Mugaritz in Spain, at Viajante with Nuno Mendes in Bethnal Green, at lauded udon noodle bar Koya in Soho, and at Lyle’s in Shoreditch, all influenced the texture of a menu built around house ferments, considered cooking of whole seafood, and loosely, if not devotedly Portuguese flavour profiles; meticulous preparation, but with a desired emphasis on pleasure in eating. A bar menu, offering the classic prego sandwich and playful riffs on pesticos, at times seemed to argue with, rather than speak to, the dining room.

That menu, and its cooking, won both plaudits and consternation: Grace Dent closed out her Evening Standard Magazine tenure with a review praising Londrino and noting the influence its ideas would likely have; “restaurants like Londrino lead the way.” Tim Hayward, meanwhile, found Carreira’s lightness of touch and pursuit of plainness too close to “monkish asceticism,” asking, “for the love of god, where’s the deliciousness?” in the Financial Times.

Carreira opened the restaurant in partnership with restaurateur and hotelier Loh Peng, who also invests in Burnt Ends in Singapore, Dave Pynt’s celebrated restaurant that, like, Londrino, started life as a Climpson’s Arch residency. Multiple sources close to the restaurant have said that Carreira has his next move lined up; Eater has contacted the restaurant for comment. More soon.