Red out of action for "a few months"

Thursday 23 January 2020

Town restaurants Red and Tinto will be closed for a few months, as far as the owner of the businesses can tell.

This is following a kitchen fire which flooded the buildings with smoke on Tuesday night.

Dave Matheson, the owner of the Red group of restaurants, which also includes Rosso and Rouge, said they were still investigating the cause of the fire. 

"We are grateful there was no harm to anyone, and to the overwhelming amount of good wishes we have received," he said, "Red and Tinto will be closed for a few months as far as we can tell."

Pictured: The fire broke out around 19:00, and customers had to be evacuated from the restaurants. 

The fire service was called to the seafront just before 19:00 on Tuesday evening, after reports of a kitchen fire in Red. That fire quickly spread because of cavities between the walls in the buildings - which are believed to be common in older buildings. The Duty Fire Officer on the scene, Steve Wilkes, told Express that it had been a difficult fire to tackle because of these voids, and the teams had to work long through the night pulling down parts of the walls to totally eliminate the fire. 

He also said there was lots of smoke damage to the buildings, something confirmed by Mr Matheson on Facebook last night. 

The post updating customers said: "A tough night in our small group of places of food and drinks. The only problem with having the 3 so close together is that when one hurts they all hurt. It looks like Red and Tinto are out of action for a while but hopefully Rosso might be spinning doughs of delight by the weekend."

Neighbouring restaurant The Catch also had to close its doors last night while they assessed any smoke damage from the fire. 

The Fire Service posted on their Facebook page thanking staff at the Thomas De La Rue for bringing them drinks while they were working. Mr Wilkes said crews had been on site until 03:00 putting out the fire, and then they had continued to observe the block of buildings all night, and through yesterday. This was because there were concerns the cavities could be concealing a small part of the fire, which would still need dealing with. 

Finally, Mr Matheson promised Red and Tinto "will be back". 

Pictured top: the fire started in Red, and spread through to Tinto.