Staff out in the cold as Levicky calls time

RESTAURATEUR Pierre Levicky has closed one of his city-centre businesses, leaving ten people out of a job, days after blaming building work for a 60 per cent drop in custom.

Mr Levicky said structural repairs being carried out at his Chez Jules Fish restaurant on Cockburn Street left him 14,000 out of pocket, with months of building work still to go.

The chef decided to close the restaurant last Thursday - two days after speaking to the Evening News about his financial worries.

But some of his staff who have been left jobless say the restaurateur gave them no warning of how serious his problems were and closed the doors on Thursday without any notice.

They said the first they became aware of the seriousness of the financial difficulties facing the restaurant was when they read about it in the Evening News article.

Mr Levicky, who ran the restaurant in partnership with Mark Lawrence, also told how he was threatening to sue the council over the building work, which he claimed was putting him out of business.

The statutory repair work - understood to be urgent structural repairs and significant roof maintenance - started two months ago and will continue until the end of September.

Mr Levicky said if he did not find a solution within the next few days, he would take the council to court.

The restaurant had already been forced to close at lunchtimes as a result of the work.

One former employee said: "We knew we were having problems but we didn't know it was so bad that it would have to close down. Mr Levicky never talked to us about it and we had to get all the information from the newspaper.

"He told us on Thursday that the restaurant was closing and gave us no notice at all. I had been worried about my job for a while but he never talked to us about it.

"He's just left us all out on the street. I have had previous jobs in hospitality and no-one has ever behaved like this."

Staff are now waiting to see whether they will get paid for the work they have already carried out at Chez Jules Fish this month.

Mr Levicky became well-known for establishing the Pierre Victoire chain of restaurants, which grew to more than 100 in the 1980s and 90s.

But the chain came to an end with massive debts in June 1998, and Mr Levicky left Edinburgh for Paris.

He returned in 2008 and opened up restaurants again, which now include Chez Pierre at Eyre Place, which has been renamed Pierre Victoire, Chez Jules on Hanover Street and Chez Jules Fish, which opened in December.

A spokeswoman for Mr Levicky confirmed that Chez Jules Fish is "not operational at the moment" but was unable to comment any further.