Record price rises at upscale restaurants mean £100 per head is no longer enough for a “top tier” meal

Record price rises at London’s most luxurious restaurants means that those charging merely £100 per head no longer fall into the top price category of the only print restaurant guide now widely stocked by London bookshops.

The introduction to Harden’s London Restaurants 2023, now entering its 32nd year of publication (published today, Thursday 10 November), notes a general rise of 8.1% in restaurant prices in the 12 months to August 2022 amongst the 1675 establishments it reviews. Amongst the 58 restaurants charging over £130 per head the rate of increase was 11.7%.

The general rate of increase was a record in the last decade and the highest in the 20 years since 2000 when the guide started calculating price rise data; with the exception of a blip after the recovery from the great crash (when a rate of 11% was briefly registered in 2011).

Fast-rising prices have necessitated lifting the top price category published in the guide to £130 per head, with £100 per head now reserved for the second tier.

Editor Peter Harden comments:

“It was the post-Brexit, 2017 edition (published in autumn 2016) in which we first introduced a £100+ top price band at the front of the book. At that time, there were 37 such entries, of which just one had a formula price over £150 per head.

Fast forward five years, and £100+ is – in this edition – for the first time the delimiter merely of our second highest price category. Our highest band is now set at £130+.

Now, there are 154 entries in the guide above the £100 level. And in a neat symmetry with the figures above, there are 37 restaurants with a formula price over £150 per head.

In fact, there are 17 entries now over £200 per head and six above £250! It feels like everything is speeding up. That’s because it is.”

Openings and Closures

The guide notes that there has been no ‘twang back’, post pandemic, with 136 newcomers recorded as opening in the year: the lowest level of openings since 2011. This rate of new restaurants falls right at the bottom of the range of 134-200 noted in all but two of the last twenty years.

There were 85 closures. This was not a high level, suggesting that in the year leading up to August 2022, a lack of custom was not yet a problem for the trade.

Net growth (Openings minus Closures) was 51. This is a low level by the yardstick of the last 31 years; and well out of the range of the 100+ new openings recorded in 2014-2018, which the guide notes now feels like “a golden era”.