St Moritz Hotel & Spa to launch socially distanced-designed summer restaurant

Cornwall’s St Moritz Hotel and Spa has announced that it will open the UK’s first “purpose-designed and built” socially distanced hotel restaurant.

The brainchild of founders Hugh and Steve Ridgway, and the St Moritz director of restaurants Jonathan Domé, the new summer restaurant aims to “surpass” the expected Government requirements on safe and socially distanced dining.

Nicknamed ‘The Anti-Social Club’, the new dining concept will consist of 16 private dining rooms, with a maximum of 96 covers.

Mixing the elements of private members clubs, private dining rooms, beach clubs and summer pop-up restaurants, the Anti-Social Club will feature multiple dining times, clear guidance and exacting operating procedures that ensure the 2-metre rule and new environmental health requirements are met at all times.

The summer pop-up restaurant has been “specifically designed” to ensure that the individual dining rooms are all accessed from outside, with the service function being provided from a central atrium, and all food and drink being delivered to the private dining rooms via a set of hatches.

This design, and the “complementary operational procedures”, mean that the St Moritz service team don’t need to go into the dining rooms, and the individual, staggered dining times mean that guests won’t run into each other.

Each and every room can also be completely cleared and appropriately cleaned, then re-set-up, to meet all requirements, between each dining party.

Interiors have been designed by Cornish agency Absolute, who provided the original design for the hotel, and take inspiration from the “clean, white art deco architecture”.

Co-owner Hugh Ridgway said: “Covid-19 has stopped the industry in its tracks. Like all hotels, bars and restaurants across the globe, the virus has hit our business like an unbelievable sledgehammer. However, as ever, we have dusted ourselves off, and risen to this unpredictable challenge in our own creative, St Moritz way.”

“Our purposeful architecture allows us to trade our rooms in a safe and socially distanced manner, however we can only sell those hotel rooms if we can feed our guests – and feed them well.”

He added: “Simply reworking our current restaurants and bars, and operating at 30% capacity doesn’t allow that, so our specially-designed summer ‘pop-up’ restaurant, overcomes this obstacle, adding to, rather than detracting from, our stylish, VIP guest experience.”