Simon Rogan
(pictured, right) has confirmed that his Marylebone fine-dining restaurant Roganic will move to another site when
its lease comes to an end next summer.
The restaurant, which opened on Blandford Street in June 2011, was originally billed as an ‘extended pop-up’ due to its location on a site that is up for redevelopment next summer. However,
Roganic – winner of the Square Meal BMW Best New Restaurant award autumn 2011 – has proved so successful and
popular that the chef wants it to live on in a new location.
‘Roganic will continue,’ Rogan told Square Meal. ‘New London sites are coming along all the time, but we would like the restaurant to remain in the Marylebone area.’
The chef is keen for the new version of the
restaurant not to draw comparisons with its original incarnation (pictured, left).
‘We would love to try and find a little twist on Roganic to make the new one a little bit different,’ he said. ‘Otherwise the comparisons will be unfair.
‘We have got a couple of really interesting ideas but we don’t have the time to sit down and work out what we are going to do. At the moment we would really like to transmit the feeling and style
of Roganic elsewhere, but on a larger scale.’
Rogan runs three restaurants in Cumbria and his flagship, L’Enclume, won its second Michelin star earlier this month.
However, the chef had also hoped that Roganic would win its first star this year.
‘I was a little disappointed,’ he told Square Meal. ‘I think Roganic is a nailed-on one-star – it’s an amazing restaurant. I hope the reason it didn’t get a star was because of the short lease and
not that it wasn’t good enough.’
This article was published in October 2012.