Dom Taylor chef, winner of Channel 4’s Five Star Kitchen: Britain’s Next Great Chef and founder of the Good Front Room, has died. Lorraine Copes said he had passed away, and described him as warm, kind, funny and stylish.
She also said he championed the cuisines of his heritage and that the hospitality sector had lost someone truly special. His death removes a chef whose career tied Caribbean food to London fine dining and to hotel dining rooms that had not previously carried that brief.
Lorraine Copes on Dom Taylor
Copes, the founder of Be Inclusive Hospitality, said: “The brilliant human and talented chef, Dom Taylor, has passed away. First and foremost, Dom was warm, kind, funny and stylish.” She added: “He was also an incredibly talented chef who championed the cuisines of his heritage, celebrating his Jamaican and St Lucian culture through food. He spent his entire career working in hospitality as a very passionate chef. The hospitality sector has lost someone truly special.”
Those remarks match the public role Taylor had built. He was born to a Jamaican mother and a Saint Lucian father, started cooking at Lewisham College in London, trained in classical French cuisine there, and furthered his studies at Thames Valley University. He also spent a year working in South Carolina in the US before returning to London.
Good Front Room in London
Back in London, he became head chef of the Belgraves hotel in Belgravia and later the Courthouse hotel in Shoreditch. Before his television debut in 2023, he ran Chef Dom Taylor Kitchen, a private chef business that specialised in Caribbean cuisine and had a residency at Fourteen87 in Catford.
After winning Five Star Kitchen: Britain’s Next Great Chef, Taylor launched a 10-month residency at The Langham called the Good Front Room. It was widely reported to be the first Caribbean restaurant to open within a luxury London hotel. In August 2023, Jimi Famurewa praised the food in a review, describing it as “jubilant, irrepressible food that provides the best possible advert for diversified thinking and fresh perspectives”.
Marvee’s Food Shop and Dalston
In May 2025, Taylor opened Marvee’s Food Shop in Ladbroke Grove as his first major project after the Langham pop-up ended. The 60-cover restaurant served Caribbean classics such as Bammy and Jamaican Festival, but it closed after just three months of trading.
He later returned to the London dining scene with a permanent outpost of the Good Front Room in Dalston. Taylor described the project as an homage to his great aunt Myrtle and the sacred front rooms of many Caribbean households, and said: “As a grandchild of the Windrush generation, I feel a responsibility to carry the torch and keep our stories, recipes and traditions alive.” The question that now hangs over his work is what comes next for those restaurants without the chef who shaped them.
