Britain’s oldest Indian restaurant, Veeraswamy, is facing closure on the eve of its centenary with its landlord, the Crown Estate, declining to renew the lease on its premises, just off Piccadilly Circus in Regent Street.
The Crown Estate says it needs the first-floor restaurant’s street-level entrance so it can renovate the offices above in the building, known as Victory House. Veeraswamy’s owners, MW Eat, has now launched court proceedings to force the Crown Estate to extend the lease when it expires in June.
Ranjit Mathrani, MW Eat’s co-owner, took the row into the public arena this week via articles in The Times and London’s Standard. He said he had done all he could over the past nine months to reach a compromise with the Crown Estate, but “I think they’ve come to the view that it’s too tiresome having a restaurant there, they want it to be all offices”.
The restaurant was founded in 1926 by Edward Palmer, a retired Anglo-Indian army officer who was the grandson of an English general and an Indian Princess. It was acquired in 1996 by MW Eat (owners of Chutney Mary, Amaya and Masala Zone), who have modernised the venue and its cuisine with great success.
Ranjit said: “It is a rare privilege to have and to nurture an institution of this type, to keep it relevant to today. We are very emotionally attached to it — as you would be if you’d spent all that time, all that care, and all those years on something. Veeraswamy is a restaurant of great important and significance to us; it would be a tragedy if we had no option but to close it down.”
But, he said, the Crown Estate “don’t care a bugger for history”.
“We’re open to moving, because we accept the inevitability that, sooner or later, they will be able to turf us out. Ideally, if they’re being reasonable people, we need two years to find a site [and fit it out], but that is not currently something they’re willing to do.”
A spokeswoman for the Crown Estate told The Times: “We need to carry out a comprehensive refurbishment of Victory House. This includes a major upgrade to the offices and improving the entrance to make it more accessible. Due to the limited options available in this listed building we need to remove the entrance to the restaurant, which means we will not be able to offer Veeraswamy an extension when their lease expires.”
The Crown Estate is not answerable directly to King Charles, but acts as an independent company managing Crown property on the nation’s behalf, with the profit going to the Treasury which in turn uses it to fund the monarchy. However, it might be expected that it would do all it could to preserve long-established institutions.
Another landmark Indian restaurant, the India Club in the Strand, was forced to close down after 72 years in September 2023 after a long battle with its landlord, who wanted to redevelop the site.
