Firm gets green light to open second French restaurant (From York Press)

Rustique gets green light to open French restaurant in Lendal, York

7:59am Monday 14th January 2013 in Business news By Mark Stead, mark.stead@thepress.co.uk

A FRENCH restaurant chain is to open its second York premises in the former home of an antiques centre.

City of York Council has approved plans by Rustique – which set up its first York restaurant in Castlegate in 2004 – to convert part of a 201-year-old building in Lendal.

The new restaurant will open at the end of March or in April.

The company is expecting to spend between £150,000 and £250,000 on the transformation of the site, which once housed the York Antiques & Collectors’ Centre.

Rustique bosses said they wanted another York restaurant because the success of its first venture in the city meant demand was outstripping the space available.

The Rustique At Lendal restaurant will have room for about 60 diners, adding to its Castlegate counterpart’s 50 spaces.

The company, which also has restaurants in Richmond and Halifax, will take over the basement of the Grade II-listed building and a section of the ground-floor which is currently vacant.

Rustique’s proposals were given the go-ahead by the council’s west and city-centre area planning sub-committee.

The company’s co-director, Fehim Kaya, said: “We are very pleased with the decision and hope to start work within the next couple of weeks, with the intention of opening in time for Easter or in April.

“York has been a fantastic choice for us and the Castlegate restaurant is fully-booked most days, which led to us looking for another site in the city so we can accommodate more diners. The Lendal building is in a different part of the city centre so the two restaurants will not be in direct competition with each other.”

Since opening, the Rustique restaurant in Castlegate has made the final shortlist in tourism body Visit York’s Taste Of York Awards, while it was rated as one of the most talked-about places to eat in the UK by travel website TripAdvisor last September, the second time it had earned that ranking.

The building where Rustique At Lendal will open was originally a chapel and has since been used as a restaurant, shops and an amusement arcade as well as the antiques centre.

Planning consultant Raymond Barnes, the agent for Rustique’s scheme, had told the planning meeting that the Lendal site’s design meant retailers had shown no interest in it, but it would be “appropriate” for a restaurant.