Christina Ong’s Como Group has emerged as a key shareholder in the lossmaking SL6, the holding company behind The Fat Duck and the Hinds Head, handing the celebrity chef the firepower to expand.
The Singaporean billionaire long credited with turning London’s Bond Street into a luxury catwalk has set her sights on a rather more idiosyncratic British institution: the country kitchen of Heston Blumenthal.
Christina Ong, the 78-year-old fashion mogul and hotelier dubbed the “Queen of Bond Street”, has emerged as the new financial backer of the celebrity chef’s lossmaking restaurant empire. Filings lodged this week show that her family’s Como Group has become a key shareholder with significant control of SL6, the holding company behind Blumenthal’s culinary ventures.
The deal hands the Ong family a foothold in one of British gastronomy’s most distinctive brands and offers the chef the financial muscle to push into new markets. It is understood the cash injection will underpin the expansion of Blumenthal’s award-winning operations, headed by The Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, the three-Michelin-starred restaurant that almost single-handedly placed British “molecular gastronomy” on the world map when it opened in 1995. Blumenthal, 59, also operates the nearby Hinds Head pub close to Maidenhead.
“Como’s international experience in the hospitality sector opens up new doors for what comes next,” Blumenthal said, adding that the partnership would allow the group to “explore new possibilities”.
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