Chef Elliot Moss and his wife, Helen, have announced the immediate closure of their acclaimed St John’s Wood restaurant, PLU.
The contemporary fine-dining ‘micro-restaurant’, seating just eight guests, showcased Elliot’s creative cooking and presentation style with a 15-course seasonal tasting menu. Opened in 2029, for the past two years it has appeared in the top 25 on the Harden’s 100 list of the UK’s best restaurants – putting it in London’s top 10.
In an email to regulars, Elliot said: “This is a very sad day for us both. We have worked tirelessly for years to make a success of PLU and we have loyal customers we are sorry to disappoint. But in the current economic climate, we just can’t afford to carry on and the time has come for us to cut our losses. We want to thank all of our guests who have supported us and helped to make our labour of love fun and rewarding. We’ll miss you.”
Elliot, the son of F1 racing driver Stirling Moss, trained at Le Gavroche after dropping out of art school. PLU was very much a passion project for the couple, with Helen in the front-of-house role while Elliot worked solo in the kitchen, producing imaginative French-influences dishes such as a gazpacho inspired by Andy Warhol’s portrait of Marilyn Munro.
Harden’s reporters described him as “a true artist who does everything himself: each phenomenal and fun dish looks too good to eat but the visuals are actually secondary to the insanely addictive deliciousness of the flavours”. Michelin’s failure – repeated this year – to recognise PLU with at least one star was condemned as a “travesty of justice”.
Elliot has indicated that there will be one final chance for guests to experience PLU, on March 6 & 7, with information available at plurestaurant.co.uk.
PLU is not the only notably London restaurant to pull down the shutters since the New Year. Le Gavroche is the most famous, ending the Roux family’s half century at the summit of the capital’s fine-dining scene. Among more recent ventures, Paris-based chef Greg Marchand has announced the closure of French, his modern bistro in Covent Garden, after eight years, while Saltie Girl, the Mayfair offshoot of an upmarket Boston seafood chain, barely lasted a full year after its heavily hyped launch. Brazilian chef Alberto Landgraf’s restaurant Bossa in Marylebone also quietly closed in January after less than 12 months.
