Richard Wilkins has closed Restaurant 104 in west London after seven years, saying the Michelin-listed dining room could no longer survive the squeeze of rising costs and weak bookings. He shut it at the end of April and said the decision came only after a five-figure refurbishment and months of extra marketing failed to turn the numbers around.
The closure lands at a moment when Britain’s high-end restaurant trade is under fresh strain. Three hospitality sites shut every day in the UK in the first quarter of 2026, and the losses are no longer limited to casual dining rooms. In London alone, 24 of the capital’s 112 Michelin-starred restaurants have closed since 2021, while more than 20% of Michelin-starred restaurants in England and Wales, 52 out of 240, have disappeared since the pandemic.
Wilkins, who previously worked with Gordon Ramsay at Pétrus, said the financial pressures had become brutal. Restaurant 104 was tiny, with just 12 covers, which made every rise in business rates or VAT harder to absorb than it would be in a larger operation. He said he had pushed harder to keep it going, refurbishing the room at the end of last year, increasing marketing, leafleting and speaking to hotel concierges in the hope of pulling in more bookings.
It still was not enough. Wilkins said the reservations coming in did not stack up against the rising costs, and he was so fatigued that he decided to stop. He closed immediately because he did not want to keep taking produce from suppliers if he could not be sure he would be able to pay them. The site remains in his hands until the end of June, and he is offering private dining and collaborations with guest chefs in the meantime.
The wider picture helps explain why his exit matters beyond one small room. Britain was once hailed as a gastronomic hotspot, with Joël Robuchon declaring in 2011 that London, not Paris, was the centre of innovative cooking, and later praise arriving from abroad only deepened that reputation. A 2018 New York Times feature celebrated the capital’s food scene, and four years ago Cumbria became the UK county with the most Michelin stars, with Thom Hetherington calling the density of world-class restaurants in the Lake District mind-blowing.
That reputation is now colliding with a harsher business reality. Hospitality businesses were still recovering from VAT going back up to 20% in April 2022 after temporary pandemic cuts to 5% and then 12.5%, and the 40% discount on business rates introduced during the pandemic ended in April this year. Wilkins said the smallest operators are being hit hardest, and his next move reflects the new mood: he plans to get a job in someone else’s kitchen so he can focus on cooking, not number crunching. For a sector that built its prestige on ambition and precision, the question is no longer who will win the next star, but how many more can afford to keep the lights on.
