Modern French fine dining · Mayfair · ££££
Restaurant Opening: November 2025
Entering Matt Abé’s Bonheur on Brook Street is walking into a room that holds decades of culinary history.
The basement at 43 Upper Brook Street in Mayfair is where Marco Pierre White staged, where Gordon Ramsay trained, and where Monica Galetti learned to cook. For nearly six decades, the Le Gavroche kitchen was the institution that produced the institution, the room that made the chefs who went on to make the restaurants that shaped how London eats. Walking down those stairs felt less like arriving for dinner and more like stepping into the footnotes of a culinary canon.
Which is exactly what makes Abé’s opening here so quietly loaded. He isn’t just launching a restaurant, he’s answering a question the room has been asking since Michel Roux Jr. turned off the lights to La Gavroche in 2024: what comes after a legend?
His answer, it turns out, is something entirely his own.
The Room
The room is unrecognisable. I’d never been to Le Gavroche but I’ve seen pictures, it was glossy black and red, dark, formal, designed to make you feel the weight of the occasion, and looked very dated. Abé and Russell Sage Studio have done something more interesting, they’ve kept the intimacy of the space but stripped out the theatre. Peach and ochre tones, curved lines, yellow leather tabletops that feel tactile and sculptural waiter stations that function as subtle focal points.
We were there for our first wedding anniversary. On the table when we arrived was a handwritten card, hand signed by every member of the team, and menus printed with our names and ‘happy anniversary,’ a detail that got our night off to a great start.
The Food
Before the menu begins, Bonheur sets its tone with canapés. Four in total, each one precise and considered, with the lobster tarte the clear highlight. An amuse bouche of basil and verbena consommé follows, clean and brilliant, a signal of what's coming. By the time the first course arrives, you already know what kind of meal this is going to be.
We ordered the Dream menu with the paired wine and non alcoholic pairing. James took the full alcoholic pairing; I did two alcoholic glasses, the rest non alcoholic. It’s worth knowing this option exists, because the sommelier clearly puts a lot of thought into this option.
Our tasting started with an Isle of Skye scallop, grilled, with peach, elderflower, and ajo blanco. The combination sounds almost too delicate, until it arrives. It came alongside a Mosel Riesling with a balance between sweetness and acidity. The pairing did what the best pairings do, it made both things taste even better than they were alone. The wine lifted the fruit and the scallop grounded the Riesling’s brightness, this pairing felt like a conversation.
The Quail Blanquette, wild asparagus, XO, is where Abé’s point of view becomes impossible to miss. XO sauce is the Japanese influence made explicit: fermented, deeply umami, the kind of addition that shouldn’t work alongside a French blanquette but it absolutely does. The quail itself was beautifully handled, but the sauce was the revelation.
The Native Lobster with grapes, cucumber, and vadouvan had a lightness that balanced the richness of the vadouvan’s spiced sauce and the two balanced each other out well. And the 125 day aged Cumbrian Blue Grey was tender in a way that felt almost structural, the result of time and sourcing rather than technique alone. Abé uses Lake District Farmers exclusively for this cut, aged to his specification, and you can taste the decision.
The Japanese influence runs through the whole menu, umami as a structural choice, it’s never overpowering, it simply deepens everything it touches.
This is food with a genuine unique point of view.
Then came the cheese trolley before dessert. There's something about a cheese trolley where I can always finds more room.
The Parallel Nobody Is Saying Loudly Enough
In 2016, Clare Smyth left Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, where she’d been chef patron of a three starred kitchen, to open Core in Notting Hill. Her first solo restaurant. Two stars in 2018 and three in 2021.
Matt Abé spent a decade as chef patron of that same restaurant after Smyth left, holding all three stars through her departure and through a pandemic. In November 2025, he walked out of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay and into the former Le Gavroche space to open Bonheur. Two Michelin stars arrived in February 2026, three months after opening, skipping one star entirely, the way Core did.
The parallel feels structural. This is what the path to three looks like: a decade of institutional preparation, a first restaurant with total creative freedom, and cooking that immediately signals a distinct point of view. Abé at Bonheur is Smyth at Core, their trajectory is the same. The question isn’t whether he gets there, it’s how long it takes.
What to Order
There are two menus: The Dream (7-courses), The Journey (5-courses). The Dream menu is the one to order, as it gives you the full picture of what Abé is doing. There’s also an à la carte option if you’d prefer to choose your own path, but if you’re going, commit to the seven courses.
Hot Tip
The menu lists an alcoholic and non alcoholic pairing, but there's no mention of splitting the two. If you’re trying to reduce alcohol intake but still want to enjoy the pairing, ask for it anyway. The non alcoholic options are considered rather than compromised, and it's the quiet solution for a long tasting menu if you want to actually remember the morning after.
The Occasion
A dinner that deserves to be the whole evening. This isn't a pre theatre or a long lunch. Bonheur is a destination, the kind of meal you build a Saturday around. If you're going with a group, book Petit Bonheur, the six-seat chef's table. You'll be required to order the Dream menu, and Matt Abé came out personally to talk the table through each course.
My Only Critique
The music the night we visited ranged from Mumford & Sons to the Beatles. My biggest critique of the space, and the one thing that felt out of place in a room that had otherwise been so carefully considered. The room filled up and buzzed, which helped, but the playlist remains the one thing I'd change.
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I'm struck that you the playlist was such a noticeable miss for you, but I can completely understand why it might have felt off key. I wonder if there is an generational thing at work here... My wife and I loved it. I actually sought out the GM to compliment him on it after the Somm told us that it was mostly his.
Just curious... what genre of music would have, in your opinion, matched the ambiance?