Restaurant reprimanded after customers taken to hospital following attacks

By Robert Firth, Local Democracy Reporter

An Italian restaurant has been told to ban customers from drinking while standing up after punters were rushed to hospital following attacks.

Giuseppe’s Place, in Borough High Street, has kept its alcohol licence despite a man allegedly having a bottle thrown at him on July 2, and another customer supposedly being attacked the following day.

Police wanted the restaurant-cum-disco to be closed while investigations into the two unrelated incidents took place.

But Southwark council allowed the venue to continue operating at a licensing meeting on July 8.

Instead, councillors opted to reduce the restaurant’s opening hours, ban two managers from working there and stop people from drinking standing up.

Officers were first called to the late-night restaurant on July 2 at around 2.40am after a bottle was allegedly thrown at a man.

The bottle missed him but smashed against a wall, causing shards of glass to stick in his arm, according to police.

A licensing meeting on July 8 heard that the man pleaded with staff at the restaurant to call an ambulance, but they refused.

The victim was treated in hospital for cuts to his arm, and the alleged attacker was later arrested by officers on suspicion of causing GBH after returning to Giuseppe’s Place.

But Robert Sutherland, representing the restaurant’s manager Giuseppe Rossi, said the venue’s CCTV didn’t show a bottle had been thrown on July 2 and said staff hadn’t denied the victim first aid.

The following day on July 3, officers passing Giuseppe’s Place at around 4.15am were flagged down by paramedics treating a man with serious head injuries on the street outside.

The man had been involved in a brawl inside the restaurant and then had been attacked in an alley outside, the licensing meeting heard.

Speaking at the licensing meeting on July 8, Ian Clements from the Metropolitan Police, said: “My concern is the staff that were there have acted in the way they have and haven’t took the opportunity they should have done to call the police, call the ambulance service.

“It appears no one knew until I submitted my application for the summary review on Wednesday morning, which is some concern to the police.”

Mr Sutherland said the restaurant had been operating since 1990 without any problems until now and that it needed to remain open to cope with the loss of business during the pandemic.

Pictured top: Giuseppe’s Pace in Borough High Street (Picture: Google Street View)