Corbin and King to open restaurant in St John’s Wood

London restaurant moguls Chris Corbin and Jeremy King are to open their ninth site in the capital this year near Lord’s cricket ground in St John’s Wood.

Chris Corbin and Jeremy King are adding to their London restaurant empire

The as-yet-unnamed venture from the duo behind The Wolseley and Brasserie Zédel will take over a former Carluccio’s site on St. John’s Wood High Street in northwest London, though it isn’t slated to open until the end of the year.

According to Richard Vines of Bloomberg, the latest addition to the Corbin & King stable will be similar in style to Colbert, the French-inspired cafe-brasserie in Sloane Square, and Viennese cafe Fischer’s in Marylebone, but with its own defined identity.

Corbin and King’s ninth restaurant will be in the northwest London borough of St John’s Wood, made famous by The Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover

Last December, Corbin and King sold a majority stake in their restaurant group to Bangkok-based hotelier Minor Hotels, which runs 150 sites around the world.

The pair changed the restaurant game in 2003 when they opened London’s first successful grand café – The Wolseley – in a Grade II listed vintage car showroom-turned-bank on Piccadilly.

Inspired by the grand cafés of Paris and Vienna, the Wolseley’s all-day dining approach broke the mould and it soon became a favourite haunt of London’s intelligentsia. Artist Lucien Freud was such a regular he was given his own table.

The duo expanded their empire with Viennese café The Delaunay in Covent Garden in 2011; the Art Deco-themed Brasserie Zédel in Piccadilly in 2012; French fancy Colbert in Sloane Square the same year; the mittel-European Fischer’s in Marylebone in 2014; and the Alsatian-inspired Bellanger in Islington in 2015.

The pair also opened their first Art Deco hotel – The Beaumont – in Mayfair in 2014, which boasts 100-seater brasserie the Colony Grill Room and an American Bar.

They joined forces in 1981 when they bought Le Caprice in St James’s, having first met in the ‘70s when Corbin was manager of Langan’s Brasserie in Mayfair and King was maître d’ at Joe Allen in Covent Garden.