Thursday 23 July 2026 3:57 pm
| Updated:
Thursday 23 July 2026 4:00 pm
Bonheur by Matt Abe is just off Park Lane
Matt Abé, formerly of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, has gone it alone with the opening of Bonheur. His food might be winning plaudits (including two Michelin stars) but our reviewer was left craving french friesI’d eaten like a catwalk model in the hours that preceded my meal at Bonheur by Matt Abe. My guest had also spent his day avoiding anything heavy. I imagine most people do before eating at a two-Michelin-star restaurant. If I’m paying £195 for a tasting menu, by the time I sit down I want to feel hungry enough to practically inhale it.Up until my meal at Bonheur, this approach had never let me down. There’s the cliché that tasting menus are small and that you crave McDonald’s after, but on multiple occasions I’ve been so full that the sight of a post-dessert amuse bouche has sent me close to a chunder, swerved only by engaging in some deep breathing.But I was caught out for the first time at Bonheur by Matt Abe. The five-course tasting menu features dishes so small that I assumed they had been designed with Ozempic in mind. Now, there is no shame in that – City AM has written about Ozempic etiquette before – with waiters learning the language to use when removing half-eaten dishes without shaming those on the jab. But Bonheur’s publicist assured me my suspicions were false.Bonheur by Matt Abe: these morsels briefly taste greatNot that these morsels didn’t briefly taste great. The Michelin guide awarded Abe two stars just eight months after opening last year, a vanishingly rare achievement and a running start for the Aussie chef formerly of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay.Abe, who also worked with Clare Smyth, was given the unenviable task of opening a restaurant in the room formerly occupied by Le Gavroche, the three-starred institution founded by the Roux brothers that was a fixture of high society in the capital for 56 years until it closed in 2024.Abe has redesigned the Mayfair basement space with beige and gold decor that’s opulent but unremarkable, although I loved the sliding door revealing glimpses of chefs in the kitchen.Abe’s classic French culinary approach is identified in simple food, elegantly plated. The quiche lorraine kicks off the tasting menu: it is an enticing, gooey melange of pastry and gruyère, the cheese just solid enough to provide the foundation to chunks of smoked ham, the pastry strong enough to hold the fort but not so strong that it doesn’t dissolve on the tongue. Ironically, this first course is the biggest dish.
