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The Dairy, a restaurant whose permanent closure in Clapham last month was greeted with widespread disappointment across the restaurant industry, will reopen in Bermondsey, south east London next week, according to Big Hospitality.
The turnaround is a quick one, and potentially a sign of things to come for restaurant owners who have been unable to negotiate rent agreements with landlords at their existing sites now able to find new, more agreeable alternatives elsewhere in the city. When announcing the closure, owners Robin and Sarah Gill said the pandemic had hit them “harder than [they] ever imagined it would.”
The new restaurant, which promises to follow the same “produce-led focus” as its predecessor, will open on Thursday 10 September, at 153-157 Tower Bridge Road, close to two of London’s most famous food centres, Maltby Street Market and Borough Market.
In a statement today, chef Robin Gill said Robin said: “Closing the original Clapham site of The Dairy was a very difficult decision for me and Sarah, but finding a brilliant site so quickly means we are able to retain our staff and bring them over to Bermondsey, which is such a relief.”
A new menu for a new era will include mackerel with fresh gherkins, sea purslane, and dash; grilled radicchio, broad bean puree, and pickled Tropea onions; and wood roasted lamb, with “hayonnaise”, charred lettuce, and mint oil. Other items from the original restaurant will also reappear, such as truffled Baron Bigod cheese with fig and walnut toast, and honey; chicken liver mousse with rhubarb jam; and and salted caramel with malt barley ice cream and cacao.
Having opened in Clapham in 2012, the restaurant established itself among the city’s most successful new-wave places to eat promoting a style derivative of Noma (where he’d previously worked) that used a modern tasting menu format formed from seasonal British ingredients in a neighbourhood restaurant setting.
“Our goal was to create an experience as close to dinning by a farm or coastline in central London with direct relationships to our beloved purveyors from the land and sea,” Gill said today. “This has developed over the years and while we have moved to our new home in Bermondsey our aim remains the same which is to be the heart and soul of the neighbourhood, creating great memories, or memory loss, whatever the case may be.”