When Gabriel Gonzalez opened the doors of Lima, a restaurant offering on-trend Peruvian dining, in 2012, London was basking in the limelight of the Olympics.
“They were boom years . . . London was almost the centre of the world,” he says, describing a well-travelled, multinational clientele with a taste for niche cuisines. On a typical Friday, the restaurants clustered around Lima in the backstreets of Fitzrovia — a West End area popular with creative and professional services firms — would be “heaving . . . buzzing”, he adds.
Now, on a sunny Friday lunchtime in May, they are all but deserted. Growth levelled out after the 2016 Brexit vote, Gonzalez says. Since then, post-pandemic homeworking, rising costs and a squeeze on household finances have left London more “subdued”.