On Friday morning, The Wolseley looked and sounded just like it always has. Stepping over the threshold out of the spring sunshine on Piccadilly, through the big doors and the dark curtain, you entered a thrilling and glamorous world, just as you have since it opened in 2003. In this art deco playground, all monochrome and gilt details, the cutlery still tinkled on china.

The espresso machine still hissed in the background. It was a full house, as usual, and the hubbub of the kitchen still mingled with the happy murmur of the guests’ conversation. The acoustics have always been strange here, simultaneously deafening and private. Some tables looked like business breakfasts, others like visitors fortifying themselves with bacon for Francis Bacon across the road at the Royal Academy. One or two customers sat alone, setting kedgeree against their hangovers. Nobody looked sad to be there.

If you had heard the news, however, something didn’t feel right. And Jeremy King – sitting at his usual table, in the far corner of the bar on the right as you go in, a plate of salmon in front of him, untouched – looked like he had seen a ghost.

Overnight, it had been announced that he and Chris Corbin had lost control of their restaurant company, Corbin & King, to their Thai-based shareholders, the Minor Group, after an auction that finished in the early hours of the morning and concluded with Minor paying more than £60m for the rest of the business. The company Corbin and King had founded, and steered through two decades of turmoil and glory, was no longer theirs, and neither were its restaurants, including The Wolseley, Brasserie Zedel, Colbert, Soutine, Fischers and Bellanger, which lie dotted across the capital, lighthouses of civilisation.

“I owe you an explanation,” King wrote in a newsletter, sent at 3.15 in the morning. “We took part in the auction to try and buy the business and assets of Corbin & King that we didn’t already own, including of course all the restaurants. Regrettably, that attempt failed and Minor Hotel Group was the successful bidder, buying the entire business.

“As a result, I no longer have any equity interest in the business, although for the time being, I remain an employee. I assume Minor will take immediate control of the restaurants.”