See also All Bar One
The Whole Hog, which had scrubbed wooden floors and sold five real ales, closed down in June 1999. £325,000 was spent by owners Whitbread transforming the bar into Casa, which offered food and drink in a Mediterranean atmosphere.
The premises became the Residence Bar, and then Ha! Ha! Bar and Kitchen.
It is currently All Bar One.
Hi Geoff,
You mention that the Star in Regent Street was home to a Berni Inns steakhouse, but you don’t mention the Berni Inns Montpellier Grill in Montpellier Walk where All Bar One is now. This was probably Cheltenham’s most well known Berni’s! I found a menu online from the early 1970s – classic Del Boy prawn cocktail, steak dinner and Black Forest gateau stuff (Bring it back, I say!). Anyway, the menu featured “Prime rump steak (half pound approximate weight) served with French fried potatoes, tomatoes, roll and butter, and to follow, ice cream or cheese and biscuits 77p” (WHAT?!!!!) Other options included “Half an oven roast chicken” with the same accompaniments…for 68p!!! And “Golden fried fillet of plaice” – 58p!!!
Bottles of wine were “Red 84p to £1.45; White 84p to £1.20; Rose 99p to £1.35 and Champagne £2.35”
The Montpellier Grill had a facade of square panelled glass in brown wooden frames with a green signage banner above and the name in gold lettering. And it boasted basement bars – a series of them – the Wine Cellar, the Doubles Bar, the Kontiki Bar and Bebe’s.
People laugh now, but the Berni Inns chain was started by two brothers (Aldo & Frank Berni) and their business partner Paul Ross in Bristol in 1956, and by 1970 they had 147 hotels and restaurants and had become something of a cultural phenomenon, tapping into a real zeitgeist of the time. The first restaurant was started with a £300 inheritance: they sold the chain in 1970 to Grand Metropolitan for £14.5 million!
Bebe’s is meant to have acute accents on the e’s, but I couldn’t work out how to do that on my email!
Anyway, Cheers!
Alan