Ever since they pipped Jeremy King and Chris Corbin to the post in securing the site of the old Theatre Museum in Covent Garden, it’s been presumed that Richard Caring and Keith McNally would be opening the first foreign outpost of McNally’s Balthazar restaurant in London. But up until now, there’s been no official confirmation of the project.

Just last month McNally told Martha Stewart in a television interview ‘I suppose I might, but I’m not sure. I’m in two minds about most things, [and] I’m in two minds about that.’

But in an interview with the Evening Standard’s ES Magazine today, Caring confirms that Balthazar London will open in 2012. ‘This will not be some Far Eastern copy, everything will be made in the US, the real McCoy,’ says Caring. ‘It won't be a copy of the New York Balthazar, but it will be in its image.'

Balthazar will be on the corner of Wellington Street and Russell Street, London WC2.