Bonheur by Matt Abé review: This Michelin magnet left me hungry
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 fries
I’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 PM 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 great
Not 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.
Next was a mouthful of melon sorbet – “this is what people imagine when they joke about tasting menus,” said my friend.
A straightforward piece of Cornish turbot is plated with fresh dulse seaweed. It’s a little straightforward but tastes good. The main dish is a saddle cut of Herdwick Hogget, a sheep between one and two years of age – somewhere between lamb and mutton – with a rich, gamey profile. The size of a large canape, the flavourful meat was offset by slithers of courgette, olive tapenade and marjoram. A separate 50p sized piece of Hogget was also on the plate; delicious, but again this dish was too small.
Realising that the next course was dessert, we asked for the last minute addition of the steak from the seven-course menu, but it was 10pm and the kitchen had closed. The maitre’d, who had made a point of coming over earlier, didn’t acknowledge that we were still hungry, leaving that to waitstaff, who promised extra desserts. Staff obliged in bringing over double helpings of the milk bread, and we accepted the offer of a pecan tart but it never arrived.
Next was a mouthful of melon sorbet – “this is what people imagine when they joke about tasting menus,” said my friend. It’s debatable whether or not this constitutes a main dish at all. Then an Ile Flottante, which is whipped meringue – basically air with blackberries and other summer fruits on top.
The seven course menu is only £30 more than the five course, but includes a steak and lobster course. Those two dishes combined looked like as much food as we got all night. That is without considering the fact that they had five more additional courses on top. Abe has some tweaks to do to make the menus feel reflective of their price points.
Fleeing the air conditioning into the suffocating heat, we went in search of hearty portions at The Stafford’s American Bar, where we wolfed down some fries with our nightcaps.
Go to bonheurbymattabe.com