Quietly Brilliant London Restaurant Considers Future After 12 Years

Updated 4:35p.m., 28 February 2019, with a statement from Wild Honey restaurateur Anthony Demetre.

Wild Honey will close in Mayfair on 1 March, with the restaurant’s future still to be decided. Chef and restaurateur Anthony Demetre’s lauded, standard-setting restaurant has been up for sale since January, but no sale has been agreed. A spokesperson for the restaurant said that Demetre is considering his options in a challenging market, having received “a couple of decent offers” for the restaurant, whose lease is up for renewal with under three years to run. Staff will be on paid holiday for the duration of the temporary closure.

The restaurant followed Demetre and business partner Will Smith’s Arbutus, which opened in Soho in 2006 and closed in 2016; that restaurant site became the altogether less acclaimed Flavour Bastard, which closed last year. Wild Honey, which serves French cuisine, neither really traditional or modern, is an unfussy, high quality, entirely hospitable option in a part of London which tends to lack such a restaurant: low-key excellence, honed and maintained over a decade.

Demetre recently opened Vermuteria at Coal Drops Yard. With a focus on a very on-trend spirit, an all-day, adaptable offering, and the phrase “the first” in its announcement, it’s in the infancy of a possible roll-out, which may provide an insight into Demetre’s motives for selling up. Or, it’s simply a question of time: Wild Honey opened in 2007, and 12 years is a long time in a central London restaurant real estate market that gets ever more expensive.

More as this story develops.