Spencer Metzger: “It annoyed me that another chef would go in and turn it into a success”

When Jason Atherton told Spencer Metzger that he was selling his Mayfair restaurant Little Social, the former The Ritz head chef and current executive chef of Row on 5, which he launched with Atherton at the tail-end of 2024, was in no doubt what to do.

Atherton, who had run the restaurant since March 2013,, wanted out his, Pollen Street Social restaurant opposite having closed in 2024. It was time for a clean break from Pollen Street, or so Atherton thought, which marked a period in his restaurant career that had seemed to have run its course. Metzger, however, felt very differently.

“I went home that night after Jason told me and came up with this crazy idea to do it,” Metzger recalls. “I didn’t know what it would be, but it annoyed me that another chef would go in and turn it into a success. I thought can’t [me and Jason] do that together?

“After Jason told me he was selling it I went to the office the next day [also on Pollen Street], popped my head in and saw that it was such a beautiful space. It’s a restaurant that deserves to do really well.”

A blossoming Rose

This ‘crazy idea’ has since blossomed into Chez Rose, a French restaurant named in honour of Metzger’s grandmother, who passed away a few years ago, and which will open on 1 June. The 46-cover restaurant will be the first project that Metzger is undertaking on his own - albeit with the guidance and backing of his business partner - and will be another milestone in what has already been a very successful career for the 33-year-old chef.

“I spent 12 years cooking French classical food at The Ritz so that is its foundation,” says Metzger of his new casual yet upscale French bistro. “And I love going to France and eating the food.

“Chez Rose will be inspired by the great French classics but not necessarily just French produce,” says Metzger. “We’re not French so we’re not trying to create a traditional French bistro but one that is inspired by France and its great dishes.”

Metzger describes the menu as being ‘super seasonal’, with daily specials using ‘when they’re gone, they’re gone’ ingredients the backbone of its offer, alongside a ‘great wine list’. While the menu is still being finalised, you can expect dishes such as Orkney scallop with cafe de Paris butter; grilled lobster with sauce chorron; aligot au morbier; and crêpes Suzette.

Despite having the backing of Atherton who, along with his wife Irha operates restaurants in the capital including Three Darlings, Berners Tavern, and Sael, as well as other projects including Riviera restaurant MARIAS that opens in Tuscany this summer.

“We are not opening it with lots of money to show that you can create a good restaurant humbly,” he says. “That’s what we want it to be. My family came from nothing - my grandma was always very generous with her time, but she never had any money and the reflection of that in the restaurant is really important to me.”

“When we were going through it, we kept saying to each other that the more fancy we make it the more it won’t work,” adds Atherton, who cites Henry Harris’ Bouchon Racine as a source of inspiration. “It can’t be anything like Row on 5 or if Disney built a bistro, because it’s all too perfect. It’s got to feel authentic. Bouchon Racine is great at that.”

Handing over the baton

Had Atherton not entered into a partnership with Metzger, a polite, ambitious and irrefutable talent who had spent more than a decade being taught classical French cuisine by The Ritz’s John Williams, the fate of Little Social would have been very different. Atherton admits that it had been fun when it lasted, with Little Social the smaller, more casual sibling to his higher-reaching Pollen Street Social across the narrow road, but that the closure of his then flagship restaurant had changed his view of things.

“I went in there and looked around and thought ‘I’m going to sell this’, Atherton says, recalling a day before Christmas last year when he made up his mind to get out. “I wasn’t in love with it and I’m not a guy who wants to run restaurants for the sake of it. When Pollen Street Social was open it made more sense, I had this dream of having a Michelin star restaurant and a bistro over the road - it happens a lot in France but not really in the UK.”

The dream became a reality after Atherton was offered the site, that was then an Italian restaurant called Number 5, for a knock down price he says he couldn’t refuse, despite being millions in debt having only recently launched Pollen Street Social. The owner kept calling him offering it for £800,000, then £500,000 and then £300,000 and so for a joke Atherton offered him £250,000. To his surprise, he agreed. “I remember saying to Irha, ‘I think we’ve just bought a restaurant,’” Atherton says.

Moreover, it worked. Atherton took pleasure in looking through the windows of Little Social and seeing his flagship restaurant full, something that is no longer possible.

“Now, 14 years later, you stand there and Pollen Street Social doesn’t exist anymore empty. Its time was up. You’ve got to know when to put a full stop on something. I went to Spencer and said I’d been made an offer for Little Social and that I was going to take it and two days later he came to me and said he’d do it.

A fresh start

Chez Rose is also the first restaurant in the pair’s partnership where Atherton will take a proper back seat. Since leaving The Ritz and joining Atherton, Metzger has worked with his new business partner to open Row on 45 in Dubai, which went on to win two Michelin stars, and Row on 5 in Mayfair, which this year replicated the feat. Chez Rose, by contrast, is Metzger’s in its naming, its cuisine and its approach.

“It’s very weird for me as it’s the first time I have no say on the menu,” says Atherton, who will provide guidance where needed (and wanted). “All I say to Spencer is, from my past experience you need hero dishes, things that people take a shine to and look for on the menu.

“My advice is based on the successes and the failures I’ve had. I’ll give my point of view as a customer.”

This relationship should prove fruitful, with Atherton wearing more of a restaurateur’s hat and Metzger more hands on with the cooking element. “As a chef, you’re often too involved in things, that is why restaurateurs are normally better at pulling off these types of restaurants because they are not heavily involved in the cuisine but more involved in the detail,” he continues.

“Jeremy King the best in the business for having a vision - saying this is what Simpson’s in the Strand needs to be, and then the food being part of the jigsaw.

“I’m fortunate enough that I’m at a grand old age where I can pull myself out of the kitchen and look at it from a restaurateur’s point of view. So doing it together with Spencer is that perfect sensibility.”

Metzger will be more hands-on, but his position at Row on 5 and its continued push for even greater things means that he won’t miss a service there. He’ll be at Chez Rose for lunch service on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays when Row on 5 is not open (“I don’t need sleep,” he says of what sounds like a brutal working week) but the restaurant will be open seven days a week for lunch and dinner.

Chez Rose’s head chef will be Mark Catchpole, previously senior sous chef at Roganic in Hong Kong and whose CV also includes time at Attica in Australia, at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal and The Fat Duck. Catchpole, who Metzger describes as “really talented young chef” initially applied to work at Row on 5 as a sous chef, but it was thought his talents would be wasted there. “He loves French food and simple food. I showed him the site and within two days was in,” says Metzger. “We will work together to write the menu and taste the dishes.”

A true partnership

Does Chez Rose feel more like Metzger’s restaurants than Atherton’s? “It feels a lot more like mine, but Jason and I have been on this journey, and we are now in this amazing groove of working together really well,” he says. “As much as it is mine, I’ve got this great sounding board in Jason that brings everything together.”

Given the success of the pair’s two projects so far, Chez Rose has the makings of being a hit. It is also likely to be another stepping stone in further cooperation between the two. Metzger has become a larger shareholder in the Atherton business.

“Chez Rose is the perfect platform for Spencer to not just run a kitchen but to understand the mechanics of a restaurant - which he does at Row on 5 anyway but in a less structured environment,” says Atherton.

“This is an incredible thing for Spencer to get his teeth into. I hope this is the start of a fruitful journey for him and me for other things in the pipeline years down the line.”