What are you comfortable spending on a dinner for two? A special one. £200? £250? Okay, let’s say £300. Including wine? £350, then. Right, we’re looking at… did you say you wanted fine dining?
This scenario has played out often since I joined Country Life this year. Friends who wish to take their partner or a relative somewhere nice seek my advice just as others might ask ChatGPT. I usually feign annoyance, but it is quite useful. People rely on me to tell them what’s trendy when it is their questions that elicit the trends.
2025 has evinced two currents based on which of these recur and which don’t: the rise of the high-low restaurant and the decline of fine dining. ‘But wait,’ I hear you say. ‘What about Osip?’ Ah yes, Osip, the Michelin-starred restaurant in Somerset that’s got one section of the media in a chokehold. ‘Didn’t The Good Food Guide call it the restaurant of the year?’ Yes. ‘And isn’t the pared-back design wonderful?’ Yes. ‘And isn’t it marvellous that Merlin Labron-Johnson sources 85% of the ingredients from his garden?’ Yes! But at £200-a-head with the odd swig of wine, it’s the sort of place to which people go once, try to enjoy every pound-a-minute and probably never return to again.
Such restaurants are reliant on a constant flow of new customers and on said customers being heavy drinkers (they make most of their money from wine). It also depends on price points that aren’t so high as to alienate potential diners while still turning a profit — a nigh-impossible balance.
Giles Coren, who gave Osip a rave review in 2024, recently admitted that fine dining was on thin ice. Speaking on his podcast, Giles Coren Has No Idea, he explained that it typically costs a restaurant £35 to procure a Dover sole only to list said fish at £45 (more than that and people might not order it). Add to this an increase in National Insurance contributions and the future of the trade looks uncertain. Spooked-out landlords have already started pulling the plug: in Chelsea, both Bibendum (two Michelin stars) and Le Colombier (no stars, but just as good) will be shut by the end of the year.
For every Merlin Labron-Johnson, there are many more chefs who might have gone down the fine-dining route in different economic circumstances, but have chosen instead to prioritise cheap ingredients and make simple, delicious food well. Remember this the next time someone writes about the flatbread renaissance.
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