Hakkasan closes Chrysan restaurant six months after opening: Hakkasan has closed its Japanese restaurant Chrysan six months after it opened in September 2012. Hakkasan, which is owned by Tasameem, the property arm of Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, partnered chef Yoshihiro Murata, whose three restaurants in Kyoto and Tokyo have seven Michelin stars between them, at the site. Last year, Niall Howard, then chief executive of Hakkasan Group, told Square Meal. “I’d been a bit concerned with the supply of Chinese chefs, for visa reasons and for skill reasons. We thought it would be wise to diversify so we decided to build a Japanese family concept similar to the Hakkasan family concept. That’s why we bought Sake No Hana. We want to develop a series of Japanese restaurants at different levels – from fine-dining to casual – and we hope to evolve Chrysan along the lines of Hakkasan. Chrysan will become the brand centre for our Japanese arm, like Hakkasan is for our Chinese family. Chrysan will offer bespoke dining, with a smaller number of covers, and the kitchen will try to push the boundaries of Japanese food. We already have Sake No Hana, which is pitched a bit above smart-casual dining – it’s probably at Yauatcha’s level. And later we hope to spin something out of Chrysan which will be more a mid-level concept.” Hakkasan reported turnover up 35% to £20.93m from £15.54m in the year to 28 May 2011. It reported an operating loss of £634,111 in the year compared to a profit of £1,190,389 the year before, but booked a profit before tax of £58,355 after shareholders waived exceptional interest of their loans to the company.

Luminar reports 14% uplift in sales over Easter: Nightclub operator Luminar Group has reported a 14% like-for-likes uplift in sales over the Easter weekend. Since its buy out in December 2011 by a management team including chief executive Peter Marks, the company now operates 56 nightclubs nationwide - its major brands are Oceana, Lava & Ignite and Liquid. This continued trading momentum builds on a successful Christmas, which delivered 15.5% annual growth. Finance director Russell Margerrison said: “These results are extremely encouraging as we continue the positive momentum seen in the second half of last year. Easter fell well coinciding with pay day and thankfully the weather was also in our favour. A 14% improvement in like for like sales shows that our clubs are our customers’ venue of choice on big occasions and, despite negative perceptions, there is still real upside in the nightclub sector. Where we’ve invested in our estate, we’ve been completely focused to make sure that money is spent wisely and that we have the right offers in place for the local market. Our investment programme will continue as we refurbish and modernise the estate by using available cash to improve the underlying business, with our next project due to start in Romford later this month.”