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Michael Bonsor to lead Chancery Rosewood hotel as managing director


By Sophie Witts


Michael Bonsor has been named managing director of the upcoming Chancery Rose- wood hotel ahead of its opening in London’s Mayfair in 2025. He will lead the launch and operations of the 144-room hotel, which is being developed in the Grade II-listed building that housed the US Embassy until 2017. Bonsor has spent 10 years at


Rosewood Hotels and Resorts, having joined the five-red-AA- star Rosewood London as hotel manager in 2013. He was pro- moted to managing director of the Holborn property in 2017, the same year it won the Catey award for Hotel of the Year – Group. Prior to joining Rosewood,


Bonsor worked as hotel opera- tions manager at Claridge’s in London. He spent 10 years working for Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts across the US and oversaw the launch of Michelin-starred L’Atelier de Michael Bonsor has spent 10 years at Rosewood Hotels and Resorts


Joël Robuchon in New York as director of restaurants. The Chancery Rosewood’s


Grosvenor Square site opened in 1960 as the first purpose- built chancery in London. The hotel development is


owned by property group Qatari Diar, which is part of the Qatar Investment Authority, the sov- ereign wealth fund of the State of Qatar. It will feature multiple res- taurants, retail concepts, and meeting and event spaces, as well as Rosewood’s Asaya brand wellness space, when it launches in 2025. Rosewood was announced as


the operator of the hotel project in 2017. It will be Rosewood’s second opening in London. The group manages 32 hotels in 19 coun- tries and has 26 upcoming prop- erties in its pipeline, including hotels in Rome, Mexico City, Diriyah and Shenzhen in 2025.


sophie.witts@thecaterer.com Jeremy King plans to relaunch Simpson’s in the Strand


Jeremy King is planning to relaunch the historic Simpson’s in the Strand restaurant in Lon- don next year. The restaurateur told The


Times he was at an early stage of plans to reopen what he described as “London’s last grand-dame restaurant”. “That will be more of a big-


theatre brasserie,” King told the paper. “But one that will very much hark on its tradition. I want people to walk in there and say, ‘Oh good, they haven’t changed it’, although it will have changed.” Plans include a large res-


taurant downstairs, another upstairs, a basement bar and a private dining room. Simpson’s first opened in


1828 and was one of the first restaurants in the UK to win a Michelin star in 1974. It is owned by the neighbour-


ing Savoy hotel, which invested in a major revamp of the dining


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room in 2017. The restaurant has not reopened since 2020 and some of its fixtures and fittings, including the famous silver carving trolleys, were auc- tioned off over the summer. Franck Arnold, managing


director of the Savoy, told The Caterer last month the hotel was in the process of signing a part- ner to reopen the space and he expected the relaunch to “make a bit of noise”. “If everything happens according to plan, I would say we should open before mid- next year, though it is still not finalised,” said Arnold. Simpson’s will be the third


in a trio of London openings planned by King next year. He has taken on the former Le Caprice restaurant site and will relaunch it under the new name Arlington next year, and is also set to invest £8m in opening New York-inspired ‘grand café’ the Park in Bayswater in spring.


Jeremy King announced the third in a trio of openings in London


King was ousted from his restaurant group Corbin & King last year after a battle for control with Thai hotel group Minor International, which has


since rebranded the business as the Wolseley Hospitality Group. The new openings form part


of a new business group called Jeremy King Restaurants.


10 November 2023 | The Caterer | 5


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