After just a year in business in London, Jean-Christophe Ansanay-Alex is leaving L’Ambassade de l’Ile, and “returning to Lyon to focus on his 2 Michelin star restaurant there”, reports andyhayler.com. The South Kensington site, now closed, will “re-open in due course as a bistro rather than a fine-dining restaurant”.
There’s no doubt that there were some excellent dishes on offer at L’Ambassade, but prices (especially initially) were very high, and the whole experience was, well, just so strange.
The restaurant follows in the steps of Gordon Ramsay’s La Noisette, in closing after it had precipitately been awarded a Michelin star. You’d have hoped that one of these famous stars might ‘tell you something’ about whether customers would actually like a restaurant, but – when the chef/restaurateur comes ready-garlanded with stars for establishments elsewhere – this would appear not always to be the case.
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