The Game Bird
A trolley of cured and smoked fish came round the room before you had ordered anything, which tells you most of what this dining room was.
Why go
It closed. The Stafford announced on 13 June 2025 that its main restaurant was being rebuilt around Michael Caines as Culinary Strategist: At the heart of this partnership lies a bold reimagining of our restaurant, The Game Bird. Relaunching in autumn 2025 with a new name, concept, and menu under Michael's direction
(The Stafford London). Boutique Hotelier confirmed the handover on 30 September 2025: the new room takes the place of The Game Bird
(Boutique Hotelier). The successor, Michael Caines at The Stafford, holds one Michelin star in the 2026 guide, with Simon Ulph as executive head chef. Harden's, Time Out and SquareMeal have all deleted their Game Bird pages.
What it was, from 2017, is worth recording. Jozef Rogulski ran it as a British dining room in a St James's hotel at a moment when the rest of London was serving small plates. The house dish was the one in the name, roast pigeon with turnip purée. There was a set market menu alongside an all-day à la carte, velvet banquettes, marble-topped tables and a bar in the middle of the room (Great British Chefs). Two AA rosettes. Lisa Goodwin-Allen came in to work on a new menu with Rogulski in 2021.
Order this / avoid
- Order: nothing here now. For the record, the orders were the pigeon, the fish trolley, the lobster Scotch egg with lovage mayonnaise, and the dressed Devon crab, which Sara Al-Ali called
glorious. Served in its shell
4. The current room's à la carte carries a Stafford beef wellington and Brixham dover sole alongside Caines' tasting menu. - Avoid: nothing to steer around at a restaurant that no longer serves.
What locals & experts say
- Sara Al-Ali, The London Economic, 7 November 2019, on what it was doing that nowhere else was:
Looking through the menu we notice something most unusual: actual full-sized plates, courses and classic dishes. Oh joy.
Her verdict on the kitchen:This is a restaurant that does British classics brilliantly.
4 - Zoe Monk, Boutique Hotelier, 30 September 2025, reporting rather than judging:
the new restaurant takes the place of The Game Bird, and takes on a new identity offering modern European cuisine.
That is trade coverage of a rebrand, not an opinion about either kitchen.2 - No critic ever scored it. Harden's, Time Out and SquareMeal all carried listings and none of them survives; nothing reachable on 1 August 2026 holds a rated review of this restaurant. That absence is part of the ruling.
Good to know
- Where it was: The Stafford London, 16-18 St James's Place, SW1A 1NJ. The FSA registers the hotel itself at 16-17.
- Where the send is now: Michael Caines at The Stafford, same room, opened September 2025, one Michelin star in the 2026 guide. It has no row in this database yet.
- Hygiene: the restaurant was never separately registered. The Stafford Hotel, FHRSID 412561, holds a rating of 5 from an inspection on 19 November 2025, which covers the room's current occupant.5
- The chef who ran it: Jozef Rogulski, executive chef from 2017 to the rebrand. Where he went next is not established.
- Michelin: The Game Bird never held a distinction. Checked against the cached 2026 London list, which holds stars only.
Verdict
listed — This restaurant closed. The Stafford announced in June 2025 that it was reimagining The Game Bird with a new name, concept and menu under Michael Caines, and Boutique Hotelier reported on 30 September 2025 that the successor had opened and taken its place. So the rung is about a room that no longer exists, and the useful judgment is where the send went. It went upstairs in quality: Michael Caines at The Stafford holds one Michelin star in the 2026 guide, at the same address, with Simon Ulph as executive head chef. What The Game Bird was, for eight years under Jozef Rogulski, was a competent and unfashionable British hotel dining room: a cured fish trolley worked table to table, roast pigeon with turnip puree as the house dish, beef Wellington, two AA rosettes. Sara Al-Ali's line for The London Economic is the fair summary, that it did British classics brilliantly at a moment when nobody else in London was serving a full-sized plate. It was good, never singular, and gone.