IT takes a lot of talent to run a Michelin star restaurant.
It takes another set of skills entirely to run a restaurant that collapses with debts of £1m.
Michael O’Hare has done both.
The acclaimed chef who won a Michelin star for The Man Behind The Curtain restaurant in Leeds and appeared as a judge on the TV show The Great British Menu, has seen his latest venture go into liquidation just seven months after it was launched leaving part-owner and former footballer turned pundit Gary Neville £366,000 out of pocket.
O’Hare closed The Man Behind The Curtain in Vicar Lane in Leeds in March this year, let the Michelin star go and opened a new concept called Psycho Sandbar.
At the time he described it as catering for the changing taste of the modern diner with a “surf shack” theme.
To the casual observer it looked like he’d just taken the opportunity to shed the hassle associated with holding a Michelin star but kept the high prices.
To be honest I’m not surprised O’Hare’s new venture has gone pop.
The only time I visited I thought I’d stumbled on a post-punk sado-masochistic sex dungeon.
Not that I’ve ever been to such a place, but I do have a vivid imagination and that’s what I thought one would look like.
When you emerged from the gents loo you were confronted with a dummy wearing a rubber gimp outfit and gas mask.
But the only spanking diners got was when they received the bill – £165 for the tasting menu, £155 for the wine pairings and 12.5% service charge slapped on top.
And the chef himself, who dressed like a rogue member of a Slade tribute band, had disappeared so far up his own backside that you could only just see the studs on his Cuban heeled boots.
I never ate at Psycho Sandbar but a client took over the entire restaurant for their 50 staff to have lunch there in the summer.
When we booked the restaurant I specifically asked if Michael O’Hare could be present at the event to chat to diners and discuss the menu.
On the day itself when I asked where he was I was told Michael couldn’t make it because “his dog is ill”.
I hope that sick puppy is better now.
While I was at the restaurant for the event I glanced at the list of bookings for the following week and they barely reached double figures most days with around 18 on the Saturday evening.
Given we had booked the entire restaurant out on a Friday lunchtime you’d have thought he’d have made the effort to slip into his leather trousers and singlet, put a bit of hairspray on and show his face.
Perhaps he was breaking the news to his business partner Gary Neville that things weren’t going swimmingly.
You wonder if the former England and Manchester United player turned up the heat on the chef the way he does as a pundit to errant managers and the football authorities.
Neville, who has appeared as a guest investor on TV programme Dragons’ Den, invested in the restaurant and became a director of the business in 2017 after he dined there.
On LinkedIn earlier this year he said he considered it “one of the most instinctive and incredible deals that I’ve ever done”.
He said: “At the end of a meal I had at the restaurant, Michael presented me with the bill, but it wasn’t a normal bill, it was a bill that had a figure on it accompanied with a note that said this will give you 50 per cent of the restaurant, and from that moment on I was the co-owner of a Michelin star restaurant in Leeds.”
Neville, whose Relentless Group has interests across a wide range of businesses, is renowned for some shrewd investments.
But this clearly wasn’t one of them.
Neville stepped down as a director on September 24 according to Companies House.
His Relentless Leisure company is the second largest creditor, owed £366,000, while the taxman, HMRC, is owed £519,000.
Slightly over £1m is owed to 12 different creditors including landlord Town Centre Securities, which is more than £72,000 out of pocket.
When he announced the closure of Psycho Sandbar last month, Michael O’Hare said in an Instagram post that: “The decision is very much based upon my exciting plans for the future, but is reflective of the changing experience market we all live in.”
I think we could all have exciting plans for the future if we could ditch a million quid of debt.
So no clues from the chef as to why his venture went up in a puff of the smoke that emerged when he served up caviar donburri and foie gras tiramisu.
Perhaps the man handling the liquidation, Vincent Simmons of Stockport firm BV Accountants, can enlighten us?
Mr Simmons, who is dealing with the liquidation process for The Man Behind the Curtain (Leeds) Limited, which was the firm behind both ventures, told The Yorkshire Post that the business had been affected by the same factors that have caused the closure of many restaurants in the years since Covid.
He said it had taken several years since the pandemic for older customers to feel confident to return to restaurants, while the business had also been dealing with increasing costs.
“Utility costs have gone through the roof and then the cost of living crisis has been the final nail in the coffin for a lot of businesses,” he said.
Was Michael O’Hare’s restaurant really aimed at “older customers”?
I don’t think the coach parties of pensioners that visit the set of Emmerdale at Harewood dropped in at Psycho Sandbar on their way home.
And as for the cost of living crisis, I suspect that anyone who was prepared to cough up more than 300 quid a head for a meal that included a prawn on a telephone – I’m not joking, that was his signature ‘Dali to Delhi’ dish – were troubled by the rising cost of living.
When Michael O’Hare launched Psycho Sandbar earlier this year he put a message on the website that started with the words: “To remain avant garde we have to rebel.”
I’m not sure if he still feels like a rebel.
More a prawn in the game who dialled the wrong number.
Have a great weekend.