The rise of bring-your-own-booze (in surprisingly high-end restaurants)

A weekday night out at a local BYOB (bring-your-own-bottle) restaurant used to involve a shameful trip to the off-licence next door for a sub-par bottle of Sauvignon plonk.

When I first moved to London, it was a means for a 19-year-old to justify dining out and maintaining a social life on the proverbial shoestring: it led to some nasty hangovers (I blame the sulphites in cheap wine, of course), and a friend and I were once dismayed to be handed paper cups and asked to leave as soon as we finished our main course at KaoSarn, an otherwise brilliant Thai restaurant in Brixton Village Market.

But in 2018, high-end restaurants are billing the introduction of bring-your-own-booze incentives as an altogether more luxurious, flexible way for oenophiles to dine, as well as a boon for bargain-hunters.

It's great news for foodies, at least in the short-term - but is it not also a worrying sign of a decline in London's hospitality industry, as restaurants scrabble to innovate for our custom? After all, one in three of the top 100 UK restaurants is making a loss, it was revealed this month. 

Harneet Baweja, restaurateur

Even Michelin-starred restaurants are getting a slice of the pie. It's no secret among well-heeled south west Londoners that the Michelin-starred Chez Bruce in Wandsworth allows BYOB with a corkage fee of £25.

At Kitchen W8, a Michelin-starred neighbourhood restaurant in Kensington, you can bring your own bottle on a Sunday for no corkage fee at all (perfect if you've spent the day trudging around an exhibition in the nearby museum district).

Meanwhile, Nathan Outlaw's restaurant Outlaw’s at The Capital (voted the best seafood restaurant in London in 2016) offers BYOW (bring your own wine) every Thursday at both lunch and dinner, for up to eight guests. Diners are required to order two courses per person, note, but there's no corkage fee on the first bottle of wine per two guests.

"I have designed wine lists long enough to know that sometimes prices can get a little out of reach," explains Outlaw's food and beverage manager, Sharon McCarthur. "It was a way for us to give everyone a chance to enjoy a nice bottle of wine with their meal without having to worry about the bill at the end."

And why a Thursday, I wonder, when BYOB offers are traditionally run earlier in the week? "We did look around to see which were the most popular days for it and decided to be different," she says. "Thursday is a great day to start the weekend, so it seemed like the perfect choice."

Elsewhere, restaurateur Harneet Baweja, the founder of Gunpowder, Madame D and Gul & Sepoy, has just launched BYOB Mondays at the latter restaurant on Commercial Street in east London. There’s no corkage charge, and all of the wines on his wine list will also be available at £5 a glass in the evening, as well.

This way, Baweja offers greater freedom to his (often discerning) guests. “The whole point is that wine is experienced with food in new ways,” he explains. “Often with Indian food, people seek out the sweetest wine, but we’re not a curry house – we serve produce-led small plates, and we want you to marry wine, produce and spice. There’s a lot to explore: everybody has a very different take on it."

“A lot of our regulars come in on Monday because it’s been a hard day at work. Everybody enjoys a glass of their favourite tipple, so we decided to make Mondays all about wine," he explains. "We always have the sommelier working on the floor, so you can learn a lot. It’s less busy, so you have more time to talk: we get lots of single diners and couples, rather than groups. Wine is so personal, and it makes a Monday much more fun.”

Baweja's wine-centric approach is considerate, and it makes good sense. But while restaurateurs may appear to have our best interests at heart, the move is also an undeniably cunning means of filling seats, garnering loyalty and squeezing out a profit on what is usually the quietest night of the week. Many restaurants are struggling to stay afloat: it was reported only this week that Carluccio's could soon close 30 restaurants.

Yet, clearly attitudes are changing: where once BYOB would have been frowned upon, or met with extortionate charges for corkage, Baweja is embracing it. “If someone is celebrating a special day and they have an fantastic bottle of champagne they want to open, you can’t say no. It’s a privilege that they’ve come to you,” he says.

Kathryn Waring, Salt Yard

Salt Yard, a modern Spanish and Italian tapas restaurant and charcuterie bar in the capital, has also launched corkage-free Mondays.

“The idea was two-pronged: it’s for people who have wonderful bottle of wine they want to enjoy in a restaurant, but it’s also for foodies who want to go out more often but can’t because it’s quite expensive. Being able to bring your own wine makes a meal much more approachable and affordable,” says the restaurant's operations manager, Kathryn Waring.

“It attracts a lot of people in the industry, people who really know their wines and want to bring in something they think is really special. I like to take my own bottle in, because then I know for sure I’ve got something that I love.

“Of course, in this climate, you’re always trying to attract new customers, and the hospitality industry is looking outside the box and diversifying," she admits. "Ten years ago, you wouldn’t even think about bringing your own wine to drink, but nowadays it’s not frowned on in any way. It brings in a younger crowd: millennials like the buzz.”

So, it seems the rise of designated BYOB nights at top restaurants is good news for both my purse and my palate: an opportunity to try out a new restaurant in a more intimate setting, before I commit to blowing the budget at the weekend (presumably, it also means I'm doing my bit to keep the restaurant out of the red.)

And, should I ever happen to come into the possession of a bottle of Krug's Vintage Grande Cuvée, I can rest easy in the knowledge that I'm perfectly within my rights to enjoy it in a restaurant. 

Shall we book a table?

Where (and when) to go to avoid corkage

• Many restaurants, of course, charge corkage - but many don’t: on a Monday, there’s no corkage at HIX Oyster and Chop House in Farringdon, nor at Jun Tanaka's restaurant,  The Ninth, in Fitzrovia (at either lunch or dinner). 

• Rivington in Greenwich now offers bring-your-own-bottle Mondays with no corkage fee.

• If you're still hungry on Tuesday, you can head to M Restaurant in Victoria or City, or to Foxlow (a sibling of the Hawksmoor steakhouse group) in Balham, Clerkenwell or Chiswick for corkage-free BYOB.

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