Struggling fish bar forced to close
A RENOWNED Birmingham city centre fish restaurant has closed just two years after opening.
The 120-cover Le Monde Fish Bar and Grill opened in August 2014 above Cafe Rouge in Brindleyplace.
A Facebook message on New Year’s Eve suggested it was to close for three weeks as part of a refurbishment – but the restaurant failed to reopen.
The first Le Monde was founded in Cardiff 30 years ago and the Birmingham restaurant was the business’s first in England.
This week director Bob Norton revealed that the writing was on the wall in the run-up to Christmas and blamed the closure on a number of factors.
“There was no overriding cause other than the fact that we just weren’t taking enough,” he said.
“We just weren’t having a particularly good run-up to Christmas.”
The restaurant was known for its market-style fish counter from which customers could choose, and in 2016 was voted Best Seafood Restaurant by the monthly Lux magazine. It was also ranked 205 out of 1,875 restaurants in Birmingham by TripAdvisor.
Mr Norton pointed to various reasons for the business’s demise including customers in that part of town generally “wanting to be served quickly” and the perception that Birmingham’s dining and entertainment scene has now shifted towards the Grand Central and New Street area.
The ‘fiasco’ of the Paradise Circus redevelopment may have also had an effect on footfall as well, he said.
A former general sales manager for Ansells across the Midlands and Wales, Mr Norton said he did not regret having tried to run his own restaurant and would look for another opportunity do so in the future.
In July 2015, Le Monde hosted the opening night of the Birmingham & Solihull Jazz and Blues Festival and began to host jazz on Friday nights.
Two months later, one of the artists to play there included Brooks Williams from the USA, a Blues Americana star ranked the 179th greatest guitarist in the world by Rolling Stone magazine.
Festival director Jim Simpson said: “Le Monde was a good host to us and I am sorry to see it close. But lots of Birmingham bars and cafes have closed over the years if they have either been in a basement or up on the first floor – Brummies seem to like to look in to somewhere before we go in. The Tin Tin Cantonese Restaurant was across the way on the floor and that also closed.”
But Mr Norton discounted the theory. “There are so many factors involved and lots of examples of first floor restaurants doing well in other cities around the UK,” he said.
However, he admitted that he had wished he could have swapped places with Cafe Rouge.
“Had we been on the ground floor where they are, I think we would have done very well,” he said.