General Manager

Beringers - All-Day Brasserie, Piano Bar and Events Venue, London City Island, E14

The story behind the name

In 1895, a journalist called Guy Beringer wrote an essay for Hunter's Weekly complaining about Sunday lunch.

He had a point. Victorian Sundays meant rising early for a heavy, joyless meal, usually while regretting the night before. Beringer proposed something better: push the whole thing back to midday, combine breakfast and lunch, and let people linger over it. He called it brunch.

His argument was never really about the food. Breakfast, he wrote, suits solitude - it is consoling, but it does not stimulate conversation. Brunch by contrast is cheerful, sociable and talk-compelling. It sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.

He closed with a postscript we have taken rather seriously: beer and whiskey are admitted as substitutes for tea and coffee.

We named the venue after him. Beringers is our attempt to build brunch the way he actually meant it - not a queue and a ninety-minute table turn, but a long, unhurried, sociable affair that begins with coffee and has no particular obligation to end.

Where we are now

Beringers opened on London City Island at the start of this year, and it has gone better than we hoped.

It has found its people. Residents in every week. Tables that book at midday an...