After 26 years in business, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Belfast, Northern Ireland, is closing due to high costs for both customers and the restaurant’s owners, CNN reports.
Deanes EIPIC, founded by Northern Irish chef Michael Dean in the 1990s, won its first Michelin star within a year of opening as Deanes in 1997.
Chef Alex Green, a finalist on the British TV show Great British Menu, tells CNN the move is part of a growing trend in the industry.
“EIPIC wasn’t a dying restaurant,” he says, but “people have expectations when they come here.
The cost of meeting these expectations has doubled since the pandemic, and has spiraled out of control. And we can’t double the price of food.”
says the cook.
Tasting menus at EIPIC are £100 (€114) each, so hardly at the top end of the price scale, but as a small town, Belfast doesn’t have the flow of London or Paris.
However, this month its owners announced that Deanes EIPIC will close by the end of 2023 due to increased price sensitivity among customers and the impact of Covid-19, Brexit and the cost of living crisis. A re-opening with a new focus is planned.
EIPIC follows the classic fine dining model that has won many Michelin stars throughout Europe and beyond. However, says Green,
“the more upscale look of the dining, the white linen tablecloths, the service and more, seem to be part of a bygone era.”
Modern Michelin-starred restaurants are “more stripped down,” he adds. While the passion, dedication and quality of the food is still there, “you don’t have the white linen, you don’t have the same level of service” and it’s more “economical to serve the customer”.
While there is still a market for traditional fine dining, it is shrinking. And the pressure on UK industry is compounded by labor shortages. “It’s about finding the right staff with the right level of commitment, knowledge, everything,” Green points out. “Very hard to find and very expensive to hire.”
Deanes EIPIC is another in a series of closed famous restaurants.
In January, one of the world’s most popular restaurants, Noma in Copenhagen, announced it was closing, with owner Rene Redzepi telling the New York Times that the fine dining business model was “unsustainable.”
In August, Anglo-French celebrity chef Michel Roux Jr. announced he would close his two-Michelin-star London restaurant Le Gavroche next January to “find time for a better work-life balance.”
2023-11-08 20:02:52
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