Owners of The Warehouse Taproom Bar and Restaurant in Setchey exploring options on whether it can open for the Christmas period

The owners of a bar and restaurant which suffered a fire last week are still hopeful of hosting those who have previously booked up for food around the Christmas period.

On Thursday evening, a blaze broke out in the kitchen of The Warehouse Taproom Bar and Restaurant in Setchey.

Fire crews spent more than three hours at the site extinguishing the flames which ignited after the premises closed for the evening. Everybody was reported as safe.

The fire caused “substantial” damage to The Warehouse’s kitchen, which is unusable for the foreseeable future.

However, the rest of the Setchey site remains open, including Beers of Europe and The Warehouse Antique Centre.

Luckily for the owners of the restaurant, which first opened in 2021, fire doors and other fire prevention measures contained the blaze to the kitchen so the bar and seating areas survived with minor damage.

Now, staff are exploring options on how to operate during the busy Christmas period - with a number of people booked up to eat around the festive season.

A spokesperson for The Warehouse said: “As you can imagine the whole team is devastated and this could not have come at a worse time with the upcoming festive period.

“We have been in contact with our insurers, who have been out to survey the damage and we are waiting to hear further from them.”

There has been some uncertainty around the possibility of being able to open for Christmas - but they will keep customers updated.

“There are a number of options available to us and one of those is to bring in a temporary kitchen, enabling us to still cater for all our festive bookings.

“However, at this early stage, there are many questions that would need to be answered before we know if this is an option.

“Because of these unknowns, we can’t, at this stage, say for sure if we will be able to still host our Christmas party bookings.”