Britain's oldest Indian restaurant takes on the King's landlord

Veeraswamy has cooked on Regent Street since 1926. On its centenary year, its landlord wants the dining room turned into offices.

The Michelin-starred restaurant, owned by MW Eat, goes to court today to keep its premises at Victory House. The Crown Estate, which manages the property for the monarch, is seeking to reclaim the site as part of a Victory House refurbishment. Chairman Ranjit Mathrani told the Financial Times the estate lacks "sufficient regard" for the restaurant's heritage. The Crown Estate denies that and says it offered help to relocate.

Mathrani's numbers make the offer look thin. He put relocation at about £5 million. The compensation on the table, he said, was £500,000. Under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, commercial tenants usually have a right to renew unless the landlord can prove one of seven statutory grounds. The Crown Estate argues it needs access to the restaurant space for the works and should not have to renew.

A petition last winter, backed by chefs including Richard Corrigan, Michel Roux, Phil Howard and Raymond Blanc, passed 20,000 signatures after the estate refused to negotiate an extension. In February Mathrani publicly urged King Charles to overturn the decision. The current owners bought Veeraswamy in 1996; founder Edward Palmer was a great-grandson of a British general and a Mughal princess, which is the origin story the restaurant has sold for a century.

A Crown landlord, a centenary dining room and a ten-to-one gap between moving cost and compensation is not a quiet lease dispute. It is a test of whether London still makes room for the institutions that made Regent Street worth refurbishing.

*Image: Veeraswamy. Photo: via The Caterer.*

Source: The Caterer