Greenwich.co.uk

Greenwich news and information

New deli planned in Nelson Road

By

Bar du Musee, now closed in Greenwich
Jamie’s Italian expected to replace the now closed Bar du Musee

JAMIE Oliver’s forthcoming Greenwich restaurant will include a new deli when it opens early next year.

Plans have been submitted to Greenwich Council for alterations to the Grade-II listed Bar Du Musee to turn it into the latest branch of Essex-born chef’s chain, Jamie’s Italian.

The application envisages “internal alterations to facilitate Restaurant with Deli at No. 17 [Nelson Road].”

The entrance to the new restaurant would be at 19 Nelson Road, which has been the cafe area of Bar Du Musee and was formerly called George of Greenwich.

The arrival of Jamie Oliver’s Italian chain to Greenwich town centre was confirmed last month by Greenwich Hospital’s Property Manager, Gilly Bexson.

 

Bar du Musee in Nelson Road has closed

By

Bar du Musee, now closed in Greenwich

A GREENWICH restaurant with a history that stretches back to the 1960s has closed today.

Bar du Musee in Nelson Road started life as a small wine bar and was the first venue in the town centre to come under the ownership of Greenwich Inc.

The bar grew in size to include a cafe area, large restaurant area and also a covered garden space.

The large venue in a prime town centre location has apparently caught the attention of Jamie Oliver and a long-rumoured move by his Jamie’s Italian chain was confirmed in the latest edition of landlord Greenwich Hospital’s own magazine.

“A new arrival, timed for early next year,” writes Greenwich Hospital’s Property Manager Gillie Bexson, “is Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Italian on the Bar du Musee site. This relaxed and affordable dining… will be popular with locals and visitors alike.”

Greenwich Inc owner Frank Dowling recently spoke to Greenwich.co.uk and said his future plans included investing heavily in the Trafalgar Tavern to deliver 15 hotel rooms and renovating the entire building, building a new hotel at the site of Trident Hall and developing a music theme at the Admiral Hardy. In addition Inc Bar will be re-launched as a “classy cocktail bar.”

Greenwich.co.uk also understands the Bar du Musee name may be revived at another Greenwich venue in the future.

UPDATED

Another Nelson Road has also closed. Italian restaurant La Cucina di Soteri, at the corner of Nelson Road and King William Walk suddenly closed for business just days afte Bar du Musee.

The owner told Greenwich.co.uk that the premises had been sold back to the landlord, Greenwich Hospital.

So Organic closes Greenwich shop

By

So Organic, Greenwich

A SHOP in Greenwich town centre that specialises in organic skincare products has closed down.

So Organic in Nelson Road shut its doors at the weekend and the owners plan to reopen the shop in Lincoln instead.

Chief Operating Officer, Stuart Burlton, told Greenwich.co.uk that the closure was because of the “reduction in customer footfall in the area, and the knock on effect this has had on retail sales.”

He added, “We leave behind a group of excellent and loyal employees, a beautiful shop, loyal customer base and, to be fair, a supportive landlord in Greenwich Hospital.”

The increase in the cost of parking in Greenwich town centre is one factor that So Organic’s owners believe has put shoppers off visiting Greenwich.

Customers with treatment room vouchers will receive a refund on application, either in full or in part if bought as part of a series of vouchers, depending on how many they had used as a proportion of the overall. Customers will also have the choice to exchange them for product vouchers on So Organic’s website, which continues to trade as normal.

New five star hotel planned in Nelson Road

By

A planning application has been submitted to the council for a new boutique hotel in the heart of Greenwich town centre.

The Greenwich Town House Hotel would be a high end 21-suite hotel above Bar du Musée in Nelson Road.

Businessman Frank Dowling is behind the application and tells Greenwich.co.uk he is in “final negotiations” with a specialist boutique hotel operator.

The hotel will occupy the upper floors of 17-21 Nelson Road, a Grade-II listed terrace designed by Joseph Kay. No external structural work is required for the conversion and following a refit, the new hotel could be open as early as February 2012.

Bar du Musée, the first business bought in Greenwich by Dowling, will be incorporated as an upmarket restaurant within the new five star hotel.

But with the landowner, Greenwich Hospital Estate, having permission to build its own 100-bed boutique hotel across the road at Greenwich Market, and following news that a large boutique hotel was recently approved in Catherine Grove, are they worried about about the continued viability of their own scheme?

Edward Dolby, Resources Manager at Greenwich Hospital, tells Greenwich.co.uk that they have “no planning grounds on which to object to this scheme” and they believe there “will be sufficient demand” for their own boutique hotel which is due to completed by the end of 2014.

Greenwich.co.uk understands a firm commitment has already been made by a national equestrian federation to book out the Greenwich Town House Hotel in its entirety during next summer’s Olympics.

Andrew Gilligan: Where have all the shops gone?

By

HAVE you noticed how many empty shops there are in Greenwich, all of a sudden? In the town centre (excluding Royal Hill) there are 19. The shop that was Warwick Leadlay, at the entrance passage from Nelson Road to the market, is the latest to fall vacant – for the second time in two years.

The only thing in the shop now is a notice in the window from its most recent tenant, Graham and Green, announcing that they have relocated to Notting Hill. That could stand as an epitaph for the folly of Greenwich Hospital’s retail strategy. They elbowed out a business, Warwick Leadlay, that had provided decades of stability on the retail scene, to bring in a trendy outlet that fled back to its comfort zone as soon as it realised that SE10 is not, thank God, Notting Hill.

Around the market, nearly half a dozen shops are vacant. Next to the Post Office, the big Bottoms Up site has been empty for months. The parade at the Greenwich end of South Street now has two vacant shops. The clothing shop in King William Walk has closed. Two of Frank Dowling’s pubs and bars, the old Cricketers (aka the Lani Tiki Lounge) and the Inc Bar above the market arch, are dry. The travel agency near the DLR station has flown away.

Some of it, no doubt, is because of the recession. Some of it is because of Greenwich Hospital’s wish to redevelop the central Market site. It is gradually moving traders out of the bits it wants to demolish, to boost its loathsome scheme to turn the Market into a hotel with a modern shopping precinct attached – unanimously rejected by the council last year, but the subject of an appeal and public inquiry this summer. More on this soon.

Some of it, though, may be because Greenwich shops depend on visitors, and it is simply not an attractive place to visit at the moment. This used to be somewhere that visitors (if not locals) came to shop. But as well as the shops, we have of course lost about three-quarters of our markets. I am increasingly struck by how hugely disappointing the town must now feel for those visitors who can remember it from a few years ago.

The dominant feature of central Greenwich has become a series of hoardings concealing, variously, a mutton-headed tarting-up (the foot tunnel), a national tragedy (the appallingly botched restoration of the Cutty Sark), a vaguely unneccesary “improvement” (the Sammy Ofer wing at the Maritime Museum), an endlessly-delayed project (the pier) or a supposed future university, currently and almost certainly now indefinitely an empty space (the old Village Market site.) And that’s before the Olympics get started…

As the new government starts to wield the axe, the assumption in many quarters seems to be that all public spending is good and that any cuts to it are bad. Much of the time this is, of course, true. But Greenwich increasingly strikes me as a textbook example of just how destructive public spending and official improvement-mania can be. We would have almost certainly have been happier, and our town would have been busier, if they had just forgotten about thir grand plans and left the pier, the foot tunnel, the Cutty Sark, the Maritime Museum, the park and the Village Market alone.

Council shuts sushi shop

By

A sushi restaurant in Greenwich was temporarily closed last week after an unannounced check up by Council environmental officers.

Itoshii in Nelson Road was forced to stop trading on Tuesday after the Council went to court to get an emergency prohibition order issued.

Council staff visited the business  to check if improvements required after a visit a month earlier had been carried out. Instead they discovered evidence of extensive rodent infestations.

There was evidence of mice and rats found in the storeroom, kitchen and even inside the wok burner cooker. There were large holes in the walls that allowed pests easy access to the restaurant and the general cleanliness of the premises was below standard.

Work was undertaken by the owners and the restaurant was allowed to reopen for business last Friday.

Matthew Norwell, Assistant Chief Executive for Community Safety and Integrated Enforcement at Greenwich Council, said:

“The Council will continue to carry out unannounced visits to food businesses in order to safeguard customers’ health. We also want residents to enjoy their leisure time in the borough without worrying about putting their health at risk.”

Major Gas Mains Replacement Starts July 1st

By

Greenwich - Road Closed

A five month project by Scottish Gas Networks to replace old gas mains in Greenwich town centre will begin on July 1st.  The utility company is spending £270,000 replacing metallic mains with new plastic piping that should last for a minimum of 80 years.

The works are taking place in Trafalgar Road, Romney Road and Nelson road, and require road closures during the replacement programme.

There will be three phases to the project:

Phase One: Work taking place in Greenwich Church Street, from number 8, along Nelson Road to just past the junction between Romney Road and King William Walk. Starting 1 July, for approximately 12 weeks, a series of diversions will be in place to enable the safe laying of a new main in an open trench.

From 1 July, for approximately five weeks, the left turn from Nelson Road into Greenwich Church Street will be closed. Traffic will be diverted via Creek Road and Norman Road to Greenwich High Road, where motorists will continue along their intended route.

In addition, westbound buses on routes 177, 180 and 386 towards Greenwich South Street will also divert via Creek Road, Norman Road and Greenwich High Road to Greenwich South Street. Buses on route 199 coming from Surrey Quays will turn right from Creek Road into Norman Road and Greenwich High Road to Greenwich South Street.

The remainder of phase one will see the reinstatement of the left turn out of Nelson Road and two-way temporary traffic lights installed in Romney Road and King William Walk.

Phase Two: Work taking place along Romney Road to the junction of Trafalgar Road and Eastney Street. From 24 September, for approximately nine weeks, the bus lane will be closed but two-way traffic will be maintained.

Phase Three: Work taking place along Trafalgar Road from the Eastney Street junction to the junction with Hoskins Street. From 26 November, for approximately four weeks, temporary two-way traffic lights will be in place. Maze Hill will also be temporarily closed during this phase with diversions in place.

SGN Team Manager Gareth Lewis said: “We’ve been working closely with the Greenwich Council and the emergency services to find the most effective way to minimise overall disruption while carrying out this essential work.  Advance warning and diversion signs will be in place throughout the course of our work and access to homes and businesses will be maintained”.

Andrew Gilligan: Progress Report

By

THIS COLUMN has been going for just under six months, and there’s already been a bit of progress on some of the topics I’ve been banging on about in that time. I definitely wouldn’t claim credit – but perhaps in one or two cases, the publicity helped push things along a little.

One of my very first pieces, in October, in Greenwich’s flagship shopping street, Nelson Road, with four shops empty and a general air of neglect. Three of the empty shops have now been filled, and not with chains either – not bad going in a recession – and the street has a perkier feel.

In February we pointed out the equally recession-salient fact that the , and offerered better quality food, than our main supermarket, Somerfield.

Now Dring’s the butchers in Royal Hill, one of the shops I mentioned, tells me that it has been shortlisted as “Best Local Shop” in the ITV London/ Smooth Radio Love London Awards. Congratulations, guys: thoroughly well deserved – I bought some chicken from Dring’s the other day and it was ace. Best of luck for the awards ceremony at the Cafe de Paris on 24 April.

Earlier this week, Boris Johnson announced that the Thames Clipper river service would take Oyster pay-as-you-go from November, something for which I campaigned in this space in February. Later this year, this column, my newspaper the Standard, a major think-tank and a number of key political figures in London will be making a great deal more noise about how to improve the riverbus: watch this space.

The biggest result against the forces of folly, though, has been in helping get TfL’s grotesque “Greenwich Waterfront Transit” completely cancelled, something which happened last week. As I wrote in November,  this scheme sounded impressive – but was in fact nothing more than the world’s most expensive bus route.

It would simply have replaced the existing 472 service from North Greenwich to Thamesmead, using the same sort of rubber-tyred diesel buses, running at the exactly same frequency, and along almost exactly the same route and roads. (There would have been a tiny amount of new bus-only road in the Woolwich Arsenal development and in Western Way, near Belmarsh.)

It was the rest of us who would have noticed the difference. The GWT was expected to cost £20 million – absurd enough for a scheme offering no real new benefits beyond a fancy name. By this year, however, the cost had risen to £46 million – more than the entire annual bus subsidy for the whole of Wales!

The cancellation caused some predictable gibbering from the kind of people who still can’t accept that they no longer live in the golden days of economic boom and Ken Livingstone, with great tides of dosh lapping around to be flung at any pointless vanity project that shines in the light.

GWT’s demise left the people of the east of the borough “again bereft of an adequate transport network,” stormed Chris Roberts, Labour leader of Greenwich Council. “At a time when the Government is quite rightly looking for infrastructure projects to support the economy and keep people in work, the Mayor of London is cancelling them.”

One person Roberts’ furious denunciations understandably neglected to mention was the local MP, Nick Raynsford – also Labour – who said last year that he was dropping his support for the scheme because “I no longer consider it justifying the substantial costs involved.”

Raynsford is right. The GWT was in fact a conscious and gigantic con-trick on the long-suffering people of Thamesmead – deceiving them that they were getting, in Roberts’ words, a new “transport network” or “infrastructure project” when in fact they were getting neither of those things.

It would actually have reduced the chances of Thamesmead getting the real transport “infrastructure project” it needs, a tram or rail link, because the bureaucrats would have been able to wave the existence of GWT in the faces of anyone who asked.

So for the sake not just of taxpayer value but of the transport needs of the east of the borough, we should celebrate GWT’s demise this week.

Duel Of The Delis

By

AFTER my last week’s moan about Nelson Road, I thought I’d say something nice about Greenwich shops for a change. To adapt the title of that bestselling book – is it just me, or are some things not quite as s–t as they were?

Books, we’ve even got a shop selling them now. New ones. We’ve got an M&S. We’ve got a fishmonger, tucked away down Circus Street. We’ve got a decent independent wine merchant, in Trafalgar Road.

And over the last couple of years, Greenwich, a place where the pinnacle of cosmopolitan eating was once the red Peperami, seems to have got itself several rather nice-looking bakery/ delis.

Well, all right, they’re not all strictly delis, they’re deli-ish – but look, I’m calling them that so we can headline this piece “Duel Of The Delis.” Alliteration, right? We hacks love alliteration.

They might not all be delis, but there certainly could be a bit of a duel because over the last three years or so a comparatively small area, West Greenwich, has gone from no deli-type places at all to four. They keep opening more of the things. Earlier this week, I took the carrot cake challenge.

I started with the oldest of the new places, what was once the “George” cafe/deli in Nelson Road, now more cafe than deli and rebranded as the Cafe du Musee. It’s joined to two other “Musee” shops, including the original bar, and it’s part of Frank Dowling’s Inc empire, of which I’ve not always been the topmost fan.

As I was standing there, making some notes about the furnishings, Frank himself, who I’ve never actually met before, suddenly came through the door specially to shake my hand (this sort of thing doesn’t happen as often as I’d like, by the way.) Had he spotted me on CCTV? Is he having me followed? “Be nice, we’re trying,” he said, before leaving just as quickly as he’d come.

You know what, Frank, I will be nice. Your shop was just a smidgeon clinical, with its black slate floor and its chandeliers – though it does have a nice grandfather clock – but actually, your carrot cake was pretty damn good, moist, generously-sized, worth the £3.25, I thought. So no green inc from me about you this time.

Inside Rhodes in Greenwich
Rhodes, Greenwich

Then it was round the corner to Rhodes, the rather stylish new bakers (est 2008) opposite the entrance to the naval college (don’t think it’s any relation to the celebrity chef Gary, which is probably just as well.) The window is stacked with shelves of cakes but the price tickets are strategically turned away from the street. If you saw them from the outside (£2.20 for a baguette) you might never cross the threshhold.

And that would be a mistake, because this is an attractive place, with friendly service, better than the Musee, some of it with a calm North American accent. They’re attentive, they approach you – although once I’d ordered and they’d put it at the till, they wandered off, leaving me a bit stuck when I wanted something else.

They didn’t have any carrot cake when I went in, so I got a sort of fruit Danish, which was good and light and had quite a decent collection of fruit in the middle Unfortunately the other thing I chose, the ham and cheese croissant, was duff: tasteless cheese, rubbery at the edges.

On the admirable Greenwich Phantom blog, Rhodes is accused of charging 70p for a scrape of butter – “which was actually margarine” – to put on an 80p scone. Didn’t check it myself, but if true, remarkably bad form, guys. Prices and consistency are the issues here.

Next stop the Nevada Street Deli, in what used to be the Spread Eagle second-hand bookshop. I miss those floors of old paperbacks, stretching away like Gormenghast, but if it had to go, this is a good replacement. “Poilane delivered every Saturday,” says a little blackboard in the window. I had a tasty sausage roll and anchovies on bread – they do light meals too – and I was well served, though gently ticked off for eating my Rhodes fruit tart thingy on the premises.

This is easily the nicest place to sit in of the four, though alas there are only two full-sized inside tables, plus a further three seats perched in the window. The reason I’d never been in before was I’d never seen a table free before.

Finally, the Buenos Aires, tucked away down non-touristy Royal Hill with, I think, the best food of the bunch. It’s Argentinian, you might guess, but not perhaps quite as Argentinian as you might hope. The Argie pastries are fab but the savouries are a bit more Med than Latin America. Lots of my neighbours love the squashy leather sofas, but I have bad memories of trying not to spill hazardous hot drinks while sinking into them.

In all of these places you can, if I’m honest, get that slight, rather SE10, sense that they’re good without being absolutely outstanding. The long-established Italian deli in East Greenwich – which was closing, but may now not be – remains the local standard to beat for quality and variety. But with the arrival, now, of four newish places doing similar things, the magic of competition may raise everyone’s game. In the tough times ahead, they all deserve to survive. Let’s hope they all do.