Alderley Edge's newest restaurant has closed its door, at least for the foreseeable future, less than nine months after opening.
Blue Lobster, located on the corner of London Road and Brown Street, opened on Saturday, 1st April in the premises previously occupied by Tomfoolery.
The Italian seafood restaurant and Franciacorta bar was the brainchild of Andrea Zacchino and Nino Caruso, who are founders of wine cafe chain Veeno, which was set up in 2013 and now has 11 branches in the UK.
Owner Andrea Zacchino told alderleyedge.com "Unfortunately, our Italian investors decided to withdraw their interest in the business and recalled the chef back to Italy.
"For these reasons, the restaurant has been closed until further notice."
He added "I was disappointed by this too... but we will take it as an opportunity to potentially take over and start a new venture."
Comments
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An unpretentious and affordably priced (for REAL locals) Chinese restaurant. We enjoyed it literally hundreds of times over the decades, from the mid 1960s right up until it closed a few years ago.
There isn't a hope in hell we'll see its like in the village again.
More's the pity.
We have just had the Lilac cottage and Fisk open in Prestbury. Both very different from each other but excellent venues.
1. Employ people that are interested in being in the hospitality industry (apart from one person, everybody just seemed to be going through the motions).
2. Train your staff. The young people there were nice young people, but they were just thrown in without any training and little supervision.
3. Greet people and serve them, don't let them wait 20 minutes for a drink...they will go somewhere else.
4. Serve excellent food at reasonable prices. Nobody in AE, rich or poor wants to be ripped off.
5. Listen to local people. They are your potential customers seven days a week. If they tell you that something is not working, don't ignore them and carry on with an empty restaurant.
6. In general, people don't want to eat upstairs. Make the most of your downstairs, it also makes it look full and attracts other people.
7. When you launch a new menu, don't insult people by ticking their name off a clipboard and telling them to pick up a one third glass of cheap fizz.
8. When your restaurant is failing, don't put up the prices as you did after your new menu launch.
9. Stop getting people to post 5 star reviews on tripadvisor. Be honest with yourselves. All you need to do is speak to local people regularly, they are your best reviewers.
10 Pay your staff.
Other than that I found the Blue Lobster OK.