The restaurant opened in June 1990. The restaurant seats 100 guests with a private dining room on the first floor, seating up to 60 guests. Mobile phones and cameras are forbidden anywhere in the restaurant or adjoining club and there is a dress code, where smart casual attire is required. A recipe book, The Ivy: The Restaurant and its Recipes, written by the restaurant critic A. A. Gill was published in 1997. Fernando Peire was appointed senior maître d', eventually leaving in December 1998, three months after the restaurant was sold to Belgo PLC as part of Caprice Holdings Ltd; Corbin and King departed two years later (whereupon they established their own Rex Restaurants, later Corbin & King). In 2000, the restaurant was awarded the Moët & Chandon London Restaurant Award for excellence. In 2005 the entrepreneur Richard Caring bought The Ivy and the Caprice Holdings group (which owns Le Caprice in the St James's area of London, J. Sheekey near Leicester Square, Scotts in Mount Street and 34 in Grosvenor Square). In 2007 Fernando Peire returned to The Ivy as Director of The Ivy and The Club at The Ivy. Gary Lee, who had previously been in charge of private functions at The Ivy, returned as head chef and was appointed executive chef in 2008. Executive chef director of Caprice Holdings restaurants (now Caprice Group) is Tim Hughes. The Club at The Ivy In September 2008, The Club at The Ivy, a private members' club with a hidden entrance via an adjacent flower-shop, was opened on the three floors above the restaurant, with membership (drawn primarily from creative industries and the arts) "as hard to get as a table at The Ivy itself" according to the author A. A. Gill. It has a Piano Lounge; a dining room ("The Drawing Room"), open for breakfast, lunch and supper; a wood-panelled library "of books that reflect many of our members' interests in art, literature, film, theatre, architecture and design"; a film screening-room and entertainment space known as the Loft; a further private dining-room seating up to 14 people and a cigar-terrace. Its former director was Fernando Peire who left in June 2021, the former senior maître d' (star of the Channel 5 TV series ''The Restaurant Inspector). The Ivy Asia The Ivy Asia is a restaurant coming under the Ivy Restaurant group, offering luxurious Asian-inspired food and drink. The original Ivy