High-profile presence in city’s hospitality trade over two decades

Aug 23 2008 by Alistair Houghton, Liverpool Daily Post

ROB GUTMANN has become one of Liverpool’s highest-profile bar owners and restaurateurs with a string of big name venues behind him.

In the early 1990s, he opened the Lyceum Cafe Bar in Bold Street and in 1995 opened the adjacent Library Restaurant.

Those businesses were sold in 1997 and Mr Gutmann’s Lyceum Restaurant Company looked towards the Albert Dock, winning the catering contract at the Tate’s cafe and bar Taste before opening Baby Blue in 2001 and developing other venues at the dock.

Lyceum went into liquidation in 2005. It had sold its Albert Dock businesses Pan American Bar and Grill, Baby Blue and Blue Bar and Grill two months earlier but the proceeds were not enough to pay off other creditors.

All three venues are still operating under new ownership.

Mr Gutmann also wanted to concentrate on his other venues. As its name suggests, the Korova family’s flagship bar is stylish music bar Korova in Fleet Street.

Mr Gutmann also founded bar and restaurant Alma de Cuba, with the 18th century St Peter’s Church in the city centre. He sold the venue and its sister venue, Alma de Santiago in the former Dovedale Towers pub off Penny Lane, in 2007.

The Korova family has also returned in force to the Albert Dock, which Mr Gutmann has described as his company’s “spiritual home”.