A members' club without members

'Many millions' have been lavished on one of the year's biggest openings: the reborn Pantechnicon

- JONATHAN PRYNN

As any battle-hardened restaurateur will tell you, the London dining game is a fickle old business. No one knows on that nervy opening day whether they have got a monster hit on their hands destined to be a much-loved fixture in 50 years’ time... or an ill-starred dud that will be shutting in six months. More likely it will be somewhere in between, a destination that will thrive in the early years on the back of the launch publicity hoopla and the initial novelty value, but become an increasingly hard slog to make ends meet after the scene moves on.

So just what is that secret sauce — in the kitchen and the boardroom — that delivers profitable longevity? Antonio Gonzalez, the Spanish hospitality boss behind one of this year’s biggest and most expensive openings, will hope he has the recipe. He and his team have taken on a glorious monster of a site that easily has the potential to make or break.

Pantechnicon, that Belgravia slab of stucco-fronted, Doric-column-adorned, neoclassical eccentricity on Motcomb Street, has re-emerged from its construction site chrysalis again after months of reinvention.

Gonzalez, a smooth-talking former advertising boss who heads the Dubai-based operator Sunset Hospitality Group, admits “many millions” — he is not saying exactly how many — have been lavished on a venue that houses two “fully fledged” restaurants, four bars, and a café behind its elegant facade.