Aktar Islam's fine dining Italian restaurant, Legna, has closed

Aktar Islam's fine dining Italian restaurant, Legna, has closed just over a year after it launched. 

The chef owner of Michelin-starred Birmingham restaurant Opheem said they had been left with "no reasonable option" but to close the Summer Row restaurant, but that he hopes to relaunch it in due course.

He told Birmingham Live: "It is with great regret that we announce the closure of Legna. It’s safe to say we had been very happy with the progress of the restaurant over the course of its first year." 

"We were overjoyed to see it recommended on the Michelin Guide 10 months in - placing it alongside some other incredible restaurants this city has produced over the last decade - and were excited to develop further with plans to open a cooking school in the empty basement area of the venue to further Aktar’s efforts to provide opportunity to the excellent young talent of the city to apply themselves in a practical setting. "

"While many options have been made available to us to simply re-locate the restaurant, there are no immediate plans for Legna as we utilise this time to focus on the two new venues already scheduled to open this year (Pulperia Brindley Place & Edgbaston). Similarly, Opheem is now comfortably into its second year and plans are afoot to push further to deliver something exceptional in the space we have.

"We are sad to say goodbye to Legna and offer our heartfelt thanks to all of our guests that supported us throughout."

The chef stressed that plans to open a 52-room hotel on the restaurant site would be going ahead as planned, and that the present focus was on the running of Opheem and the launch of his new Argentinian restaurant, Pulperia, later this year. 

Other prominent restaurant closures in central Birmingham have included Nocturnal Animals, from which chef Alex Claridge stepped away earlier this year.