Black & Blue, the steak restaurant operator, has acquired its seventh restaurant - the Archduke wine bar on London's South Bank - the first of two openings this summer.
The group, which is led by entrepreneurs Alan Bacon and Nick Hill, will continue to operate the venue under its current name but will introduce a new menu, featuring steaks, after a brief refurbishment.
The Archduke - a 6,000sq ft venue housed in converted railway arches near Royal Festival Hall - was launched in 1979.
Black & Blue's latest restaurant will quickly be followed by another when it opens the Sweetwater Bar in Marylebone at the end of the summer.
Bacon and Hill, who built up the Tootsies business before they sold it to Andrew Bonnell in 1999, opened the first Black & Blue nine years ago in Kensington. The group now operates five under the brand as well as Mortimer's Grill in Bloomsbury.
Hill said the group wanted to continue to expand and was looking for sites of around 3,500sq ft in central London.
