Exclusive: Top Sheffield restaurant set to close

Good afternoon readers — and welcome to our Monday briefing.

When I heard the news it came as a shock. Tonco, one of the best reviewed restaurants in Sheffield, is set to close. We’d only been there a few months ago. In our piece from last November, co-owners Flo Russell and Joe Shrewsbury talked to us about how challenging running a hospitality business was in the current economic climate — but we never imagined this news would come so soon. Today we ask: should more be done to support our struggling restaurant scene?

As well as that, we have a conference about comics, news of a new book by one of Sheffield’s best artists, and a Sky House in Waverley.

Refer friends and win prizes! Since our exciting referral scheme was tweaked to make it easier to win, we’ve given away lots more prizes to our subscribers. The leaderboard is currently headed by Alex McLean with an amazing 20 referrals (we sent him and two other subscribers their free tote bags a few weeks ago). Five people have also got three months’ membership for free after referring five people, while another five have got a free month’s membership after referring three. To refer someone to us, you must send them the special link on this page.

Are you a budding journalist or editor? We’ve got a journalist role going for our sister title in Birmingham (details here) and a deputy editor role across all of our titles (details here). If that sounds like you, or someone you know, then please apply and/or share — we’d love to hear from you.

Catch up and coming up

On Saturday, Victoria spoke to Lord David Blunkett about his political journey from left wing firebrand council chief to authoritarian Home Secretary. You can still read that piece here.

Last week we sent out two great newsletters to our 2,026 paying members. In the first, Dan travelled to South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard’s moorland burning summit in the hope of meeting the man who was blamed for one of the worst air pollution incidents Sheffield has seen in years — the Duke of Rutland. And in the second, we reported on the ongoing row between Alison Teal and the Green Party over whether she should be allowed to stand for the party in Sheffield Central despite her “gender critical” views. An extract from that second piece is below.

“There’s a dominant faction in the party and it’s been wreaking havoc,” says Alison Teal. “They won’t go quietly. I know that. But now it’s so much harder for them and it gives us great confidence to continue to fight against it.” It’s Friday, 9 February. An hour earlier, the Mayor’s and City County Court in London ruled that former Green Party deputy leader, Dr Shahrar Ali, had been discriminated against during a row over his “gender critical” beliefs. It’s a verdict Teal had long been hoping for. Though it won’t directly affect her disciplinary case with the Green Party, its importance to her own situation can’t be overestimated.

This week we’ll send out two more including one about what the Sheffield Connect bus tells us about the city’s less than brilliant public transport system, and another which we can’t say too much about just yet. To help fund a new way of doing journalism based on paying members rather than clickbait and stories about celebrities, please subscribe using the button below. It costs just £1.34 a week or 23p a day if you pay for 12 months up front (£70).

Editor’s note: This week we’ll be sending details out about our next members’ event! This will be the first of several events across the year exclusively for those who take out a membership with us. This one is guaranteed to make you think, and will be followed by a chance for food and drink with fellow members of the Tribune tribe. If you haven’t yet joined, now would be a great time to sign up.

The big picture: Sheffield stars on the West End stage 🎭

Park Hill musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge has opened in the West End to rave reviews. The Olivier Award-winning show started its run at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in Covent Garden earlier this month. Our recent piece about the smash hit show is here. To book your ticket, click here.

This week’s weather 🌥

Our weather forecast comes from dedicated Sheffield weather service Steel City Skies, who say it will remain changeable with mild weather giving way to average temperatures after midweek ahead of a chilly weekend.

Monday 🌦 We're greeted by a decaying occlusion early on, then we turn fine and fair with bright spells and patchy cloud. Breezy from the west with highs of 12°C.

Tuesday 🌦 Windy and mild from the southwest with showers/rain likely during the afternoon as a cold front swings east. Highs an impressive 13°C.

Wednesday ☔ A deep low over Iceland brings active fronts to  the UK with a wet and windy morning especially. Gusty southwesterlies with highs a mild 13°C once more.

Thursday 🌦 The trough to the northwest ushers in polar maritime air and brings our temperatures back to average with sun and showers. Breezy with 9°C the high.

Friday 🌦 Similarly mixed but there should be some sun to be had, as well as blustery showers, wintry over the tops. Highs of 8°C with night frosts possible.

Outlook: A chilly and unsettled weekend is expected, contrasting this one with rain or showers and a risk of wintriness over high ground (disruption unlikely) ☂️

To see the full forecast and keep up to date with any changes to the outlook, follow Steel City Skies on Facebook.

Exclusive: Top Sheffield restaurant set to close

Top line: Top Sheffield restaurant Tonco is to close — the third restaurant in the city to call it quits in as many months. Is there anything that can be done to support our hospitality sector through its toughest test?

Tonco started life as a pop up, but opened their first permanent restaurant in Dyson Place on Sharrow Vale Road in late 2019. Over the last four years it has developed a reputation as one of Sheffield’s best dining experiences. 

• Tonco’s emphasis on using locally sourced produce and sustainability has seen it attract scores of five star reviews online, and in 2022 it was nominated for best restaurant in the north in the Observer Food Monthly.
• The restaurant’s high point was probably a glowing review by star food critic Marina O’Loughlin in The Times in which she described Tonco as a “gleaming example of local hospitality in the city of steel”.

However, when we wrote about Tonco late last year, they explained how the cost of living crisis, rising inflation and soaring food prices were making it harder to get food on plates at a price that customers could stomach. “There's only so long you can get stuff onto the table at the price that we're doing this year, let alone next year,” owner Joe Shrewsbury told us. Now, less than three months later, the financial situation of the industry would seem to have got even more precarious.

Earlier this month, Juke and Loe at the Milestone in Kelham Island announced they were to close. And vegetarian and vegan restaurant VorV, which was also in Kelham Island, closed just before Christmas. “Hospitality in Britain has been broken and we can’t see it getting repaired any time soon,” said Juke and Loe joint owners Joseph and Luke Grayson online. “Racking our brains we still don’t know how this decimation of our industry began and is allowed to continue.” VorV owner Matt Burgess said it felt like they had been “forgotten completely”.

Obviously, this is not just a Sheffield issue. A study published last month found that the number of licensed premises in Britain had fallen by 3.6% in the year to September 2023 — from 103,682 to 99,916, the first time the total has dropped below 100,000 in two decades. 

• Restaurants and other hospitality businesses have benefited from a 75% business rate reduction for the last two years. However, the biggest single cost they face is energy.
• Celebrity chef Tom Kerridge recently told The Independent that his restaurant, The Hand & Flowers in Berkshire, was quoted a 700% increase on its utility bills last year.

Bottom line: It’s great that Sheffield’s food scene has been receiving so much praise over recent years. However, while glowing reviews in the national press are all well and good, they don’t pay the bills. If you’re happy with a future in which all that will be left is identikit Stonegate pubs and Wetherspoons, then you don’t need to do anything at all. If you want to see some of Sheffield's best independent restaurants and pubs survive, then now is the time we need to support them.

The Weekly Whitworth ✍️

Our cartoonist James Whitworth with his own take on this week’s big story.

Our media picks 🔗

Insurrection, armed raids and polished perfection in story of one of city's oldest firms 💎 A lovely piece in The Star about Sheffield oldest business, jeweller H. L. Brown. Founded in 1861 by Harris Leon Brown, a Pole who fled to England as a 19-year-old after becoming involved in an insurrection against the Russian authorities, the firm has since survived the Blitz, armed raids and a global pandemic, and is currently run by Brown’s great-great-grandson James Frampton.

Forty years have made it no less devastating ⚒️ The Telegraph reviewed the BBC’s documentary Miners' Strike: The Frontline Story, as we approach the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Orgreave. They found it a powerful and affecting account, speaking to miners who are still devastated by what happened during the strikes, although felt it was not as well-rounded as the Channel 4 documentary that came out last month. While the Channel 4 mini-series has met with near universal acclaim, not everyone is happy — see this episode-by-episode response published by the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign.

Anxiety makes university a fight for survival. This is what must change 🎓 The parents of a Bristol student found dead in her flat in 2018 are campaigning for universities to have a “duty of care” to the young people that attend them. Last week, Margaret and Robert Abrahart won the latest round of their legal battle against the university. They were joined outside court by Maxine Carrick, whose son Oskar killed himself while he was studying at Sheffield Hallam in 2021.

Home of the week 🏡

This beautifully-presented four bedroom townhouse is part of the Sky House development in Waverley and has two side gardens as well as a roof terrace. It is on the market for £320,000.

Tribune Tips: If you want to tell us about a story or give us some information, please email editor@sheffieldtribune.co.uk. We are always happy to speak to people off the record in the first poll instance, and we will treat your information with confidence and sensitivity.

Things to do 📆

Comics ✏️ On Wednesday, join Sheffield Hallam University’s graphic design and illustration department at SHU for a day of presentations, discussions and lectures about the value of comics. Origin Stories seeks to explore the political and social situations that are the basis for creativity within comics, the spark that leads to their creation and their wider influence on the creative industries and culture. The conference runs from 9am-6pm and tickets are priced £10.

Jazz 🎷 Jazz at The Lescar returns on Wednesday with a very special performance by hip-hop artist and Sheffield’s first poet laureate Otis Mensah. In Come Beautify The Night, Mensah will perform with an experimental setup of piano and saxophone, taking influence from the rhythmic and expressive freedom of jazz to solo through themes of race, identity and the body. For a taste of what to expect, watch his latest video here. Doors open at 8pm and tickets are £7-£10.

LGBTQ+ 🏳️‍🌈 Also on Wednesday, as part of LGBTQ+ history month, SAYiT present My Mind on Paper: How we found ourselves in queer literature, a panel discussion about the books, poems or scripts which opened a whole new queer world to readers. Expect a lively discussion looking with pleasure at ancient texts, poetry, graphic novels, diaries, sci fi, rom-coms, pulp fiction, and everything in between. The free talk runs from 6.30pm-8.30pm at Sheffield Central Library.

Out of the ordinary 🖼️

Regular Tribune readers will know that we are big fans of the work of Sheffield-based artist Mandy Payne. Working with spray paint on self-mixed concrete, the medium she has chosen to work in reflects the subject of her art — the grandeur and beauty of postwar architecture. Now, local publisher Revelations 23 Press has produced a book of her work featuring 50 full-colour artworks featuring brutalist estates in Sheffield, Manchester and London, as well as a brand new interview exploring how and why her paintings are made. Our piece about Mandy is here.