Gino D'Acampo's Cheshire restaurant sold to San Carlo Group

Celebrity chef Gino D’Acampo’s Luciano restaurant in Alderley Edge is to close just one year after it opened.

The site has been sold to Italian restaurant brand San Carlo Group and will shut its doors after its last service on 14 February.

It will remain closed for around five weeks before reopening under the San Carlo brand.

The restaurant will undergo a full refurbishment at a later stage and it is understood all staff will be retained following the sale.

Steven Walker, chairman of D’Acampo’s growing restaurant business, said: “The deal is part of our strategy to focus on opening upmarket restaurants in central London and major UK cities such as our imminent openings in Leeds and Manchester, together with international locations.”

San Carlo Group runs 32 UK and international sites and will open in Dubai and Miami this year. The Luciano’s site will be its first location to open in Alderley Edge.

Marcello Distefano, managing director of San Carlo Group, said: “We are delighted to acquire such a prominent location in our heartland the north-west and look forward to welcoming it into our Italian family.”

D’Acampo launched the Luciano brand, named after his son, in 2021 with a restaurant at the ME London hotel on the Strand.

The chef is to open an Italian restaurant and bar at the Leeds Marriott Hotel this spring, which will be his sixth launch in less than two years after signing deals with Melia hotels and Marriott.

A statement announcing the deal said that after “20 years of competing at the top of the premium Italian dining scene” Walker and Distefano saw the sale as the start of a collaboration between the two restaurant groups, both in the UK and overseas.