Mayfair’s Met Bar – a venue where, back in the day, A-listers clambered over one another to push past the velvet rope – is to relaunch as a grill restaurant.

The bar first opened in 1997 and Madonna, Patsy Kensit, Liam Gallagher, The Spice Girls, Cher, and Kate Moss were all regulars.

Detail on the new opening is sparse, but we know a 60-cover ‘open-flame’ restaurant is due to open on October 30 within what is nowadays branded as the Como Metropolitan Hotel. The kitchen will be run by Hawksmoor‘s executive chef Richard Turner, and Colin McSherry, formerly of The Ledbury, The Fat Duck, and Murano. Not too bad a pedigree, so seemingly there is the intent to put the venue back on the map.

Manager Liam Davy told the Evening Standard, which broke the news: “There’s a lot of fun and history to that space and we will have a bar, but it won’t be the sort of bar where you can stand with a cocktail talking to All Saints. There’s no desire to hark back to those days.” [Speak for yourself! Ed].