Il Forno on Duke Street has closed. It ran for more than 20 years on the same stretch of road — one of the longer-running independent restaurants in the city centre. The closure came in 2026 without much public notice. The Sixty Kitchen, also on Duke Street, closed on 31 January 2026. Two closures on the same street in the same year is noticeable. Duke Street runs between Bold Street and Berry Street, and the stretch between those two junctions has been where a lot of the city centre's mid-range independent dining has sat. Both Il Forno and the Sixty Kitchen were in that bracket — not cheap, not particularly expensive, the kind of places that filled up on a Thursday evening without requiring a booking weeks in advance. Neither closure has been replaced yet, as of July 2026. **What's coming nearby.** Flat Iron, a London-based steak restaurant, has taken 25 Castle Street — a few minutes' walk from Duke Street. It's expected to open summer 2026. Flat Iron's model is a single cut of steak at a set price. It's a chain, not an independent, but it fills the mid-range dinner bracket that Duke Street has lost. **What's still there.** Duke Street still has Maray (no. 91), which has been there long enough to be a fixture — Syrian-influenced small plates, walk-ins possible earlier in the week. Beyond that, the street connects into the Bold Street and Berry Street corridor, which still has a reasonable range of options. The closures are worth noting because this stretch of Duke Street was one of the more stable parts of the city centre food scene for a while. Whether it stays that way depends on what, if anything, takes the vacant units. No announcement of replacement tenants has been made at either site.