The Good Front Room

The name is a room: the front room in a Caribbean house kept spotless for a special guest, that no child was ever allowed into, which is what Dom Taylor's great-aunt Myrtle kept and what he built a restaurant out of (The Good Front Room).

Why go

Read this first. Dom Taylor, who founded the restaurant and cooked it, died suddenly in July 2026 at 44. The venue's own page states that "The Good Front Room will remain open as we honour Dom's legacy and continue the work he was so passionate about", and it is trading Thursday to Sunday. No source names who is running the kitchen now (Hot Dinners).

What he built is worth understanding. Taylor ran a private chef business and had worked at The Courthouse Hotel and The Jam Tree before entering Channel 4's Five Star Kitchen: Britain's Next Great Chef, judged by Michel Roux. He won, and the prize was a pop-up in Palm Court at The Langham. It was booked to run six months and ran ten (Hot Dinners).

He was plain about the project: "As a grandchild of the Windrush generation, I feel a responsibility to carry the torch and keep our stories, recipes, and traditions alive" (Hot Dinners). The permanent room opened on 5 February 2026 on the ground floor of Thomas Tower in Dalston Square, 80 covers, in the unit Mildreds had. The opening carte ran a coco stack slider, maple, lime and chilli-glazed plantain, rum and raisin pork belly strips, a short rib brown stew, whole jerk chicken for two, a seafood boil and a sweet potato sticky toffee pudding. The rum punch is Wray & Nephew and Kraken with ginger, pimento, pineapple, lime and cherry syrup, and there is Red Stripe and Dragon stout behind the bar.

On the London signature: this is jerk and curry goat cooked at the fine-dining end rather than over a drum of coals, and it is the argument the restaurant exists to make. At The Langham the jerk arrived as marinated boneless thigh with plantain jam, plantain crisp and a blackened sweetcorn dressing, and Chef Dom's curry goat as braised shoulder with breadfruit and roti alongside (Hot Dinners).

Order this / avoid

• Order: whole jerk chicken for two. The curry goat, which was one of the hotter dishes at the Langham and takes the house hot sauce well. Dark rum and raisin pork belly, with the thyme salt crackling. The ackee and saltfish cake with scotch bonnet aioli. If the sides come as they did before, take the green banana gratin and the rice and peas, which the Langham review called "the real winners here" (Hot Dinners).
• Avoid: Monday to Wednesday, because the room is closed. And avoid reading the Langham coverage as a review of this kitchen. It describes a hotel dining room three years ago.

What locals & experts say

• Hot Dinners, Gavin Hanly, on the Langham residency in September 2023, which remains the only dish-level assessment of Taylor's cooking in print, and is of a different address: "Taylor is going for a new take on Caribbean cooking at The Good Front Room, mixing that with the kind of fine dining approach you'd normally find in Palm Court." On the plates: "Lots of the food on offer has a decent kick to it... The starters and mains work really well, bringing something genuinely new to this style of dining." And the caveat in the same piece: "Everything up until this point was great, but while our desserts were fine, they didn't quite hit the high points of the earlier part of the meal." ref
• Ravneet Gill, chef and one of the Five Star Kitchen judges, quoted by Hot Dinners after his death: "Dom was the winner of Five Star Kitchen, which we filmed in 2022, and I said this wholeheartedly at the time: he was instantly captivating from the moment he stepped in front of us. He had a real sparkle in his eyes. He was warm, kind and incredibly talented." ref
• Mike Reid, chef and fellow Five Star Kitchen judge, on the venue's own tribute page, which is where these lines sit and how they should be read: "He took Caribbean cuisine somewhere it had never been in this country, and he did it his way." The broadcaster Paul Brunson, on the same page: "I had never seen the food of my heritage presented with such refinement, imagination and care." ref
• The Infatuation, Sinead Cranna, 5 February 2026, an opening notice and explicitly not a review, since the site's own line is "We haven't been here yet, but want you to know this spot exists." What it does describe: "expect dark rum and raisin-glazed pork belly, scotch bonnet hollandaise, and delicate takes on ackee and saltfish cakes." ref
• Nobody has reviewed this address. Time Out, the Standard, the Guardian, Vittles and the Good Food Guide were searched by name on 30 July 2026 and none carries a piece on the Dalston room. That gap is stated rather than papered over, and it is why the rung sits where it does.

Good to know

• Where: 1 Thomas Tower, Dalston Square E8 3GU, a minute from Dalston Junction Overground. Ignore the E8 1FA address on some listings; that is Atkins Square, about a mile away.
• Timing: Thursday, Friday and Saturday 5pm to 11pm, Sunday midday to 7pm. Closed Monday to Wednesday as of 30 July 2026.
• Booking: 80 covers and it books. Reserve through the venue's own site.
• Price: the Dalston menu price is not published anywhere we can read. For scale, the Langham residency was GBP 75 for three courses in 2023.
• Hygiene: there is no Food Standards Agency registration under this trading name, checked nationally by name and by postcode on 30 July 2026. The premises record at this address is still the previous occupant's, Mildreds Restaurant, FHRSID 1210095, rating 5, inspected 6 March 2025. That is an absence of data, not a finding.
• Diet: no dietary statement is published. A gungo pea daal is on the list and the Langham menu carried a dairy-free yoghurt, but ask rather than assume.
• Who runs it: founded and cooked by Dom Taylor, 1981 to 2026. No successor has been named publicly.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: none. His saved-places export carries an empty note for this row, so the master CSV line about Dom Taylor's dining room is enrichment text rather than his, and nothing here is attributed to him.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

could-visit — Go if you are in Dalston, and go knowing where it stands. Dom Taylor won Channel 4's Five Star Kitchen in 2022, judged by Michel Roux, and the prize was a pop-up in Palm Court at The Langham. It was meant to run six months and ran ten. He named it for his great-aunt Myrtle's front room, the one kept spotless for guests who never came, and he was direct about why he was doing it: 'As a grandchild of the Windrush generation, I feel a responsibility to carry the torch and keep our stories, recipes, and traditions alive.' The permanent room opened in Dalston Square on 5 February 2026 with whole jerk chicken for two, a short rib brown stew and a seafood boil. Taylor died suddenly in July 2026 at 44, and the restaurant says it will stay open. That is the position, and the honest consequence is that nobody has assessed this kitchen. The only dish-level review in print is of the Langham residency three years ago, where the starters and mains were called 'something genuinely new to this style of dining' and the desserts were not. What holds it at could-visit is craft evidence rather than doubt about the project: the cooking here has never been reviewed, the menu price is unpublished, no successor has been named, and it now trades four days a week. One reliable report that the kitchen holds moves it to should-visit immediately.