Christopher's is closing its Covent Garden home
The American restaurant and martini bar leaves 18 Wellington Street at the end of September after 35 years, with the Paul family already hunting for a new site.
The Christopher's Covent Garden closing takes effect at the end of September, ending a 35-year run at 18 Wellington Street that made it one of the neighbourhood's longest-standing addresses.
Chef and restaurateur Christopher Gilmour opened Christopher's in 1991 inside a Grade II-listed building that had previously housed a papier-mâché factory and, before that, London's first licensed casino. The Paul family has owned the business since 2010.
The building holds three distinct spaces: a ground-floor, Art Deco-inspired martini bar, a first-floor dining room serving American classics, and a lower-ground Club Room used for private events. All three close together at the end of the month.
A lease ends this month; the family says the name does not.
A lease ends, not the restaurant
According to Restaurant Online, the closure is a lease decision rather than a shutdown of the brand: the Paul family did not renew the tenancy at Wellington Street and says it is actively looking for a new permanent site for an "updated concept" carrying the Christopher's name forward.
The team is set to stay together in the meantime, taking on pop-ups, private events and collaborations while the search for a new address continues, The Caterer reported. No timeline has been given for when, or where, the restaurant might reopen.
Three decades in one Covent Garden building
Christopher's arrival in 1991 came as Covent Garden was shifting from a fading fruit-and-vegetable market district into the tourist and theatre destination it is today, and the restaurant's American menu and cocktail-forward bar became one of the area's fixed points through that change, a rare survivor as rents in the surrounding streets climbed year after year.
The closure adds Christopher's to a run of long-standing London closures this year, even as other addresses nearby keep drawing new attention, including Simpson's in the Strand's return to the Michelin Guide after its own overhaul. Whether the Paul family can find a Covent Garden replacement, or moves elsewhere entirely, will determine how much of the original address survives the move.
