Green Park Brass.qxp_Layout 1 24/02/2022 17:06 Page 1
CITY | BUSINESS
Booking hall to brasserie
In the beginning there was a Victorian railway station with a booking hall. Then the trains disappeared and the building was left derelict, surrounded by ugly 1960s buildings. Later Andrew Peters arrived and turned the shabby restaurant in the old booking hall into a brasserie. He planned to stay for three years, but the business has just got to a record 30. Emma Clegg finds out how it all happened...
“
I
t’s very easy when you’re starting out in the restaurant business to have something very small and then be forever chained to it. The problem is that restaurants often have a husband and wife team, one back of house, one front of house and 30 covers and then it’s hard to make enough money to let other people run it.” Andrew Peters, who set up Green Park Brasserie 30 years ago this year, is explaining to me the challenges of running a restaurant business. Andrew had previously specialised in restaurant start-ups or turnarounds, and had run successful London restaurants such as the Soho Brasserie and Tuttons in Covent Garden. In 1991 he was looking for a location for a new restaurant when he came across a venue in Green Park, then called Station Park Restaurant. In the depths of the recession, the area was desolate, bleak and rough and the restaurant was surrounded by ruthless 1960s architecture, including the farfrom-uplifting DHSS building opposite. Green Park Station was originally Queen Square Station – built in the 1860s it operated as a working station until the 1960s when changes to British Rail led to services being slowly wound down, and the doors were finally closed in 1966. The derelict site was restored as a retail and market space in the 1980s which is when Andrew found the building that had been the booking hall of the station. Imagination and positive thinking must have been required. “At that
We are not only here to provide memories – we are battery rechargers, we want people to come here to feel good and to leave feeling more energised
44 TheBATHMagazine
|
March 2022
|
iSSUe 229
