BT Tower restaurant to turn again

The revolving restaurant at the top of the BT Tower is to reopen after 30 years.

The 620ft skyscraper, formerly known as the Post Office Tower, closed to the public in 1980 amid security fears. Now BT plans to open the 34th-floor venue and will approach chefs including Heston Blumenthal, Jamie Oliver and Gary Rhodes to oversee the restaurant.

Rhodes already runs a restaurant on the 24th floor of Tower 42, once the NatWest Tower, which was London's first building to surpass the BT Tower in height.

The revolving restaurant, used by BT for corporate hospitality and company events, is set to reopen around Christmas 2011 with seating for 60 to 70 diners. The BT Tower opened to the public in May 1966, with Billy Butlin, founder of the holiday camps, granted a lease to run the restaurant.

Sitting on the 10ft-wide revolving part of the floor, guests would take 22 minutes to complete a circuit as they dined. In the first year of opening, more than 100,000 people flocked to enjoy a 360 degree view of the city and dishes such as smoked salmon, beluga caviar and an extra-large steak.

An IRA bomb exploded in the 31st-floor lavatories in October 1971. Nine years later, BT's nationalised predecessor cited "security reasons" and closed the tower to the public.

In 1993, Labour MP Kate Hoey gave the BT Tower's absence from Ordnance Survey maps as an example of "seemingly trivial" information that remained officially secret. English Heritage declared the Tower a national monument in 2001 and it was given listed building status.

Rhodes's manager Caroline Teeling said the chef would "absolutely love to be involved". She added: "Funnily enough, it's something we have talked about a lot over the past few years - it is such an iconic building." A BT spokeswoman said: "We don't comment on rumour and speculation."