Things are hotting up: Oliver Peyton is expanding his business and will run a café-bakery beside a restaurant owned by Gordon Ramsay

Irish restaurateur Oliver Peyton, best known for his role as a judge on the 'Great British Menu' television series, is expanding his business, having signed a lease to open at Giles St Central, the office and residential scheme designed by starchitect Renzo Piano in London's West End.

Peyton will run a café-bakery there while chef and television star Gordon Ramsay is also opening a restaurant there.

The Mayo man left Ireland aged 17 in 1979 and studied textiles before going into the nightclub business. He eventually sold out of that to go into restaurants.

His Peyton & Byrne bakery serves cakes, biscuits and tarts, hot pies and quiches and is one of the more prominent units in the scheme.

Peyton operates restaurants in London's public spaces including the National Gallery, St James's Park in Westminster, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew and the Wallace Collection in Marble Arch. He also has cafes and shops in train stations, other galleries and the British Library.

Last year, Peyton was one of the mentors in an RTE series about cooks trying to get their home recipes turned into a commercial product for Supervalu.