Popular Spanish restaurant closes its doors
A POPULAR Spanish restaurant has closed.
Owners Fiona and Joe Botham of Levanter in Ramsbottom confirmed the closure with a short message on its website.
They said: “Levanter is now closed. Thank you to all our guests who have visited and supported us over the last nine years. We will miss you.”
The closure comes after the owners had been forced to close its spin-off bar and dining room space on Smithy Street in January this year due to the cost of living crisis.
They had only planned to ‘hibernate’ that part of the business, leaving the main part of the restaurant open, until the summer.
At the time, they said: “We’ve tried everything possible to avoid this scenario - but you know the script I’m sure the overall Cost Of Living & Cost of Doing Business situation. Both (understandably) have seriously reduced demand & simultaneously led to huge rises in our costs from every angle - but undoubtedly & most seriously the UNTENABLE hike in energy prices.
“We could probably just about handle everything else but that’s the killer blow. It’s impossible to keep all our doors open for now.”
The restaurant had asked the government to do something to help via its Twitter account, after their energy bills rose from £18,000 a year to a staggering £55,000 a year. They tagged in Kier Starmer, Rishi Sunak and the official Downing Street account in their post.
After running a successful street food operation, dedicated to the style of cooking from northern Spain’s Basque Country, the owners opened Levanter in 2014.
It quickly became a hit, with national critics heading there to sample its infamous dairy cow sharing steak.
The couple’s other project Baratxuri, which span off from Levanter, continues in the Peter Street food hall exhibition.