TV chef and Sunday Brunch host Simon Rimmer has closed his first restaurant after 33 years in business citing “unviable” rises in rent and running costs.
The former This Morning regular and author of four books, including one with his Sunday Bruch co-host Tim Lovejoy, took to Twitter (X) to deliver the news, saying that Didsbury veggie restaurant Greens would close “with immediate effect” following a rent increase “in the region of 35%” and spiralling bills for materials and energy.
He added that it was a “heart-breaking day.”
Rimmer has co-owned the restaurant with Didsbury Events and Catering chief Simon Connolly since 1990, when the self-taught chef first took over the venue.
The TV chef currently owns 14 restaurants in the north-west of England and one in Dubai and, unusually for a celebrity chef, continues to cook in his restaurants every week according to a profile on his agent’s website.
Among Rimmer’s other restaurants is a sister branch of Greens in Sale, Manchester, and he added in his video message “hopefully we’ll see you in Sale if not here.”
Rimmer’s announcement is the latest celebrity chef closure since covid and then the cost-of-living crisis began to take a chunk out of the hospitality industry in 2020. Masterchef 2015 finalist Tony Rodd replied to the North West chef’s post having also revealed yesterday that he would be closing his “untenable” London restaurant Copper and Ink:
Last year, meanwhile, Michel Roux Jr, one of the very first celebrity chefs to enter the public consciousness through the medium of TV also announced that he was to close his two Michelin-starred La Gavroche in London’s Mayfair, where celebrity chefs including Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White cut their teeth, after 56 years in business.
