A family restaurant has bid farewell with one last feast after 35 years.
Gilbey’s restaurant in Old Amersham served its loyal customers one more meal on Saturday, November 4 before the closure.
The iconic restaurant at a prime location in Old Amersham was opened by Lin and Michael Gilbey in the late 1980s.
Lin Gilbey told the Free Press in July as the restaurant went up for sale that the “perfect storm” of Brexit, Covid lockdowns, the war in Ukraine and the cost of living crisis was making trading “very hard.”
Tragically, Lin’s “business partner and wonderful husband” Michael Gilbey died in June last year, making the situation “too much” for her.
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On Saturday, Gilbey’s held the farewell meal to its hungry fans.
She said: “I was at 'the last supper' on Saturday night with my youngest son and the restaurant was full and lively and the food and service as always, was sublime. The table next door to me were bemoaning our closure and were clearly very sad that Gilbey's was coming to an end.”
As a silver lining, Gilbey’s in Eton will continue trading as normal and it’s gone from strength to strength due to its “totally different pattern of trading,” Lin said.
The Eton site boasts a restaurant, bedrooms, meeting rooms and spaces to accommodate private dining and functions such as weddings within close proximity of Windsor Castle and its visitors, which provides a “big corporate safety net”.
As for Gilbey’s Old Amersham, Lin is now “handing on the baton” to a new operator to look after her beloved customers.
She is currently showing the site to prospective buyers.
“I just hope we find an operator who will follow in our footsteps and care for our loyal band of customers who we are going to miss hugely.
“After 35 years who would have thought it would come to this? But I have to be a realist and face up to the fact that if people are experiencing hard times financially, then the first thing that gets lopped off their spending list is luxuries: eating out in restaurants being one of them,” she added.
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