Pide restaurant founded by Alan Yau closes its doors

The restaurant’s website – despite still having an active bookings widget – states that the Soho restaurant is closed “due to a technical issue”.

According to a sign posted on Babaji Pide’s door, the site has in fact been closed “by the official receiver”.

Yau has not been involved with the restaurant for over a year.

The restaurant’s records on Companies House show a First Gazette notice for compulsory strike-off action posted on 6 March, but this was discontinued four days later.

Yau founded a second London pide restaurant, Yamabahce, in Marylebone in 2017. Yamabahce’s website is not currently active for bookings, its Deliveroo page is not accepting orders, and its phone is not being answered.

Yau, who founded Wagamama, Busaba Eathai and Hakkasan, takes his interest in Turkish cuisine from his Turkish wife.

The restaurateur is known for founding Asian restaurant brands, and Yamabahce was his first opening since leaving the AAYA business which overseen Duck and Rice and Babaji Pide.

Yau is renowned for distancing himself from the restaurant industry before launching new restaurants. In 2009 he quit the industry to become ordained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, and in 2012 he announced he would leave the business following the launch of Betty’s Kitchen in Hong Kong.