Russell Norman: “I think the sort of people who went to my restaurants before have grown up a bit”Disaster seems to get Russell Norman’s juices flowing. Right after the 2008 financial crash he quit his job as operations director for the upmarket restaurant group Caprice Holdings to launch Polpo, the no-reservations hipster hangout that caught the new gastronomic mood with its Venetian small plates, poky cocktails and air of scruffily insouciant cool. That success spawned 16 spin-off and sister restaurants, including Polpetto, the Brooklyn-esque diner Spuntino and the Jewish deli Mishkin’s before being hit by a crippling withdrawal of investment and then the pandemic. Last summer Norman, 55, stood down from the group without his hoped-for “thank you” payout. He and his business partner Richard Beatty, whom he met when they were students at Sunderland Polytechnic, stood drinking coffee on a deserted Frith

Source: The Times June 09, 2021 16:07 UTC