New fine dining restaurant GL50 opening in Cheltenham

A new fine dining restaurant is opening in Cheltenham, on the site of The White Spoon, with an affordable lunchtime menu to tackle food waste.

Published
GL50 will be operated by Jonas Lodge on the former site of The White Spoon.
GL50 will be operated by Jonas Lodge on the former site of The White Spoon.

A new fine dining restaurant is coming Cheltenham, leasing new life into the popular White Spoon building, following its closure in March 2019.

Named GL50, the new Cheltenham town centre restaurant will serve modern British cuisine, as well as offering an affordable lunch offering, using excess ingredients from the previous evening’s service, to tackle the issue of food waste.

Set to open on Saturday 16 November 2019, GL50 will be operated by Jonas Lodge, who trained under Heston Blumenthal. The chef also worked briefly alongside Chris White – the former chef director of The White Spoon, where GL50 will take over residence.

Speaking to SoGlos, Jonas explained how he came up with the idea of an anti-food waste lunch: ‘We wanted to use the offcuts and trim because when you cook fine dining food, there’s an awful lot of wastage. Now, waste is becoming so focussed on in the public eye, I wanted to create a completely separate menu using as much of that ‘waste’ from the evening as possible. As such, it’ll be a much cheaper lunchtime offering too.’

When explaining the choice of name, Jonas told SoGlos: ‘We went through lots of different names and they either sounded really pretentious or really rubbish! I thought that with a postcode, it’s kind of ambiguous. Because of the style of food that I want to do, I didn’t want it to sound pretentious or unwelcoming. So, we think that GL50 is quite welcoming. ‘

For more information, follow SoGlos’s Facebook page for all the latest updates on GL50.

More from Food & Drink