Short for Great British Restaurant, GBR is housed in the luxury Dukes London hotel and specialises in classic British food, courtesy of talented chef Nigel Mendham.
35 St James's Pl
St. James's
London
UK
SW1A 1NY
Contact Details
  • 020 7491 4840
  • Visit website
  • GBR
    35 St James's Pl , St. James's, UK, London , SW1A 1NY
    Telephone
    020 7491 4840
    Restaurant reservations
    Open Table Logo

    If you’re talking classic British cooking, there are few that do it better than Nigel Mendham. His career has taken him through some of the best hotel restaurants in the country, and his elegant British food earned him a Michelin star at The Samling Hotel in Windermere, before he moved to London to link up with Dukes Hotel. His first restaurant there – Thirty Six – was awarded three AA Rosettes, before being replaced by GBR.

    GBR stands for Great British Restaurant, and given the chef’s resume, you can make an educated guess as to what’s on offer. From fish and chips to steak and kidney pie, GBR serves up a host of British classics, all with Nigel’s refined touch. Nigel’s expertise in British food also stretches to produce, thanks to time spent in all corners of the country, and he takes full advantage of his regional contacts at GBR, promoting the very best of British produce.

    GBR has menus for every possible time of day and occasion, too. The brunch menu has plenty of lighter options on offer but also features more substantial British fare, including eggs Benedict, a Cumberland sausage roll and grilled kipper in lemon and parsley butter. Weekend visitors can even make that brunch a bottomless one, complete with Prosecco, if they choose.

    Meanwhile, Dukes Hotel regularly wins awards as one of the best hotels in the country and is a perfect setting for Nigel’s quintessential cooking. The world-famous Dukes Bar is the perfect place for a pre-dinner tipple, and even has a cognac and cigar garden to relax in afterwards.

    Three things you should know
    1
    Parties of up to twelve people can hire a semi-private dining room just off from the main restaurant to enjoy their food in a quieter setting.
    2
    GBR also does an excellent afternoon tea selection that includes a variety of sweets, scones and finger sandwiches, as well as a glass of Champagne.
    3
    The Dukes Bar in the hotel is famous for its martinis. The bar was a favourite of Ian Fleming’s, and is said to be the inspiration for James Bond’s love of the signature cocktail.
    GBR
    35 St James's Pl , St. James's, UK, London , SW1A 1NY
    Telephone
    020 7491 4840
    Restaurant reservations
    Open Table Logo
    The Chef

    Nigel Mendham

    Normal 0 21 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabla normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-ansi-language:EN-US; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} Nigel Mendham has been cooking since he was a child, inspired by the unpretentious, but tasty, dishes his Mum made at home: “What my mum would cook, simple stuff. Salted belly of pork and that sort of thing, just cooked for ages and it fell off the bone. And you just pick it off with a fork, chuck potatoes in . . . Well it’s really simple stuff, like shepherd’s pie, that sort of stuff. I used to get involved, play around. Then it moved on to having a little dabble at Christmas lunches for the family, like 8-10 people and it just started moving on from there.” Summers spent clam-picking and crabbing and the resulting experience of cooking this fresh bounty also left their mark.His first experience of the hospitality industry was working as a teenager in a Norfolk pub, running food from the kitchen. When the kitchen became short-staffed, he went in to help cook. He tells The Arbuturian website: “I never ran food again.” City and Guilds came next – “you had to be in college all the time, no messing”, he told us – followed by years spent training in restaurants around the country, staying long enough in each job to really learn the restaurant and the role: “All my head chefs have always given me something to get where I am now”, he told us. After leaving Norfolk, he spent two years working at The Randolph Hotel in Oxford where he worked his way up from commis chef to chef de partie, followed by a sous chef role at Stamford Park and a senior sous chef job at South Lodge Country Hotel in Horsham.