Glendola Leisure Group to launch new site in the City
The Silk & Grain will run over two floors and is 163sq.m in size, with the first floor hosting a 56-cover restaurant. The venue is being designed by surface-id and will specialise in aged cocktails and steaks.
City market
The Silk & Grain will be the Glendola Leisure Group’s first venture in the City of London - a location that its managing director Alexander Salussolia has been interested in for a while.
“I actually looked at acquiring this site in Cornhill when it was a wine bar about eight or nine years ago because I liked the location so much and we were very keen to do an operation in the City," he told BigHospitality.
"At the time we were unsuccessful, but now we’ve had a second opportunity. We’ve wanted to experiment with a business in the City for a while, at the moment we operate in the West End of London but never in the City of London so it was an exciting opportunity that we couldn’t resist.
“In terms of the site we’re right in the middle of the refurbishment at the moment; we’ve pretty much gutted it all out and started again. We want to create a business which has a little bit of Shoreditch flair with City fare, that brings the fun of Shoreditch into the City. I won’t say much more than that because people need to come and experience it for themselves.”
Food and drink offering
The Silk & Grain will concentrate more on its food offering in the daytime, serving on both floors, before focusing on its aged cocktail concept on the evenings and keeping the restaurant area to the first floor.
It will offer a British grazing menu with offerings such as Clonakilty black pudding ‘scotched’ quail’s eggs, crispy pig’s ears, and British cheeses and charcuterie. It will also offer mains including a selection of different dry-aged steak cuts and other British inspired dishes. Starters will be priced from £6, while mains will range from £12 to £20 and desserts will start at £5.
Salussolia believes it is the aged cocktail offering that will really make the venue stand out for customers. The Silk & Grain have an in-house process to mature spirits in barrels and has tested its cocktails out against non-barrel-aged drinks, believing the aged ones to have improved flavour profile and depth.
“At the moment there are some people barrel aging cocktails with one or two drinks, but for us our whole cocktail list is barrel-aged,” he said.
“This will make us stand out as a venue, we are the first people to bring barrel aging in any scale to the City of London, probably even to London, so we’re very excited about it and we hope our customers will really appreciate it and it will be key in their decision making to come and visit us as opposed to the other options they have in the City.”
Expansion plans
According to Salussolia it is very important for Glendola to develop each of their venues individually in a manner that is bespoke to their location and market, which is something they consider when purchasing a new venue.
When asked about Glendola’s future expansion plans, Salussolia said: “We’re always looking and we’re bidding on a couple of businesses at the moment, but none that we’re in a position to report. We’re a long established family business being going for over 40 years, and we’re very selective about the businesses we develop and expand into. As a result it comes in a very eclectic way, when the businesses are there we will do them.
“Obviously we’re expanding and we always want to grow as a business, it’s really important to always be developing and growing, but we’re in this for the long-haul. We’re unusual, most businesses in our sector are building to an agenda to sell the business at some point, we’re building a generational family business so we have to be more selective about the sites we take because we know we’re going to be there in ten or twenty years’ time.”
Silk & Grain will open this summer at 33 Cornhill in the City of London.
