Peter Sanchez-Iglesias is planning to bring celebrated Bristol restaurant Casamia back to life – 18 months after closing it down permanently as ‘financially unviable’.

Posting on Instagram, he announced: “Casamia will reopen again. Unfinished business.”

The restaurant was originally launched in 1997 by Peter’s parents as a relatively modest suburban trattoria, before being transformed by Peter and his late brother Jonray into a gastronomic powerhouse from the mid-2000s. In 2016 it moved to new harbourside premises in the centre of Bristol, and three years later was hailed as Britain’s best restaurant in the 2019 Harden’s guide.

Peter says he wants to get back in the kitchen, having spent the past few years as a restaurateur, running Paco Tapas in Bristol, Decimo at the Standard Hotel in London and Casa, the more casual successor to Casamia in Bristol.

“I just want to be back in Casamia cooking… This is about a return to the kitchen for me. If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it. I’m 38 years old – I want to get outside my comfort zone again.”

Acknowledging that bringing Casamia back will be expensive and probably not hugely profitable, Peter is looking for a host venue such as a hotel or new development that needs to attract an audience. “As long as the opportunity is right and I can get world-class ingredients, I’ll go wherever. But my family would have to be able to come with me“