Fine dining restaurant L’Ortolan in Shinfield near Reading is to close next month after nearly 40 years.
The restaurant confirmed to Thames Tap it will close at the end of August but the owners, who did not wish to speak publicly, said a combination of general market conditions for fine dining after Covid led to the decision. L’Ortolan said it had experienced an upturn in business in recent weeks but it would not prevent the closure.
Last year a planning application was submitted to Wokingham Borough Council for the two-storey Grade II-listed former vicarage in Church Road, to be converted back to a house. That proposal was approved in February.
The vicarage building, which became a private house in 1939, has been a Michelin Star restaurant since its sale to chef Richard Milton Sandford in 1978.
It has been owned by chefs Nico Ladenis and, later, John Burton-Race who named it L’Ortolan in 1986.
TV chef Alan Murchison ran the restaurant for 10 years from 2004 under current owner Peter Newman, an IT entrepreneur who acquired it in 2000.
Image: L’Ortolan Restaurant by Des Blenkinsopp, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
© Thames Tap (powered by ukpropertyforums.com).
Sign up to receive our weekly free journal, The Forum here.
