At 16, Matt Abé started cooking professionally in Sydney. At 21, he moved to London to work for Gordon Ramsay. And in November 2025 – 18 years later, and after five years as chef-patron of three Michelin-starred Restaurant Gordon Ramsay – he opened Bonheur, his first independent restaurant. It’s on the Mayfair site where Le Gavroche – the first UK restaurant to receive three Michelin stars – stood from its launch by Albert and Michel Roux Snr in 1967 until its closure in 2024.
“I was looking south of the river,” Abé says, but the moment he stepped inside the old Le Gavroche site, he had “this feeling, this gut feeling that it was the right place. It was home.”
The room was still “a big, vast, barren space”, stripped back with the old carpet underfoot. But even then, he started visualising the design. Fourteen years after first dining at Le Gavroche, Abé is carrying forward the legacy of a room that shaped British gastronomy while creating a restaurant that is, as he puts it, “completely my vision, my direction”.
Bonheur’s redesign of Le Gavroche leans into warmth and light, with nods to his Australian heritage. “We can’t put kangaroo on the menu so I wanted to use the [Australian] colour palette,” Abé says.
The palette mimics the Australian landscape, with sandstone and clay tones, and floral creations designed to resemble lichens, mosses and wild mushrooms. The calm, coastal brightness softens the basement’s former formality. Curved lines and plush upholstery – including carmine-red velvet banquettes – round out a room that feels both contemporary and deeply personal.
As for the fare, Abé believes that great cooking lies in balance: acidity, savoriness, texture and a sense of familiarity guests can feel in their bones. “Even my cocoa-nib ice cream tastes a bit like Coco Pops milk,” he jokes.
In practice, that means the Gordon Ramsay protege is presenting a cuisine unmistakably his. There’s veal slow-baked with Italian pumpkin and a hay-infused buttermilk sauce; 125-day-aged Cumbrian beef with bordelaise sauce, potato, grilled onions and smoked bone marrow; and toasted grains with smoked chestnut and Macallan whisky caramel for dessert, all plated with the precision you’d expect from Abé’s fine-dining background. “It’s finessed. It’s very precise. It’s not just bits and pieces all over the plate,” he says.
Details are everything at Bonheur, and Abé is also keen to point out the level of care that’s gone into the choice of crockery, which ranges from rosy-gold-bronzy, granite and black, to simple white plates. The precision also extends to Bonheur’s name.
“For me a restaurant name is really important, it needs to have some kind of meaning,” he says. “I love the French language. I can’t speak a lot of it, but I do love the way it sounds.” He was attracted to the word bonheur – which means joy or happiness – partially because of the way it looks (especially its odd number of letters) but mainly because of what it symbolises. “When it comes to a restaurant like this, you’re here for indulgence, you’re here for pleasure, you’re not here for sustenance.”
With the history of Le Gavroche shadowing the space, Abé is determined to produce a restaurant that follows in its footsteps. “The biggest thing for me about taking on this venue is more about trying to carry on a legacy of what the Rouxs were so good at,” he says, “the nurture and growth of talent throughout the entirety of the restaurant.”
The restaurant seeks to cater to different dining preferences: it offers à la carte alongside tasting menus – the five-course Journey and the seven-course Dream. But for Abé, a tasting menu is the way to go. “It’s an outlet for chefs to be expressive, and for people to have that gastronomic experience,” he explains.
It’s two hours before the first service, and he looks surprisingly calm. “I’ve worked for 24 plus years in fine dining,” he says. “I feel I am ready to take on this challenge.”
Bonheur by Matt Abé
43 Upper Brook Street, W1K 7QR
02071398624
Hours:
Tue & Wed 6.30pm–9.45pm
Thu to Sat midday–2.15pm, 6.30pm–9.45pm
