Heard Covent Garden flagship opens with a speakeasy

The Heard Covent Garden flagship opens this November, the biggest site yet for chef Jordan Bailey's smash burger restaurant, with a dessert and cocktail speakeasy downstairs.

Ground floor keeps to the burger menu that built the brand across Heard's first two sites; downstairs is new territory, a speakeasy built around desserts and cocktails rather than snacks to go with drinks.

Bailey ran the kitchen at three-Michelin-starred Maaemo in Oslo before opening Aimsir in County Kildare, which took two stars within four months. Heard is a deliberate change of register: the signature dish is The Heard, a double smash patty with jalapeno hot honey, Ogleshield cheese, white onion and a secret sauce, built on the same technical attention Bailey once applied to tasting menus.

Heard has always been about seeing how good something familiar can become when you obsess over every part of it.

The Heard Covent Garden flagship follows Borough and Soho

Heard opened its first site in Borough in March 2025, followed by a second in Soho that August. Covent Garden becomes the third and by far the largest, joining a run of openings in the neighbourhood that includes Cassette's arrival from the Levan team. The wider menu keeps The Boring Burger, a plainer classic cheeseburger, alongside Wild Umami, a vegetarian patty built from black beans and wild mushroom.

A speakeasy first for the brand

The downstairs room is a first for Heard: hot apple pie, brulee cheesecake, milk soft serve and customisable ice cream sandwiches and sundaes, paired with a cocktail list rather than the beer and natural wine that usually sit alongside the burgers upstairs.

“I love burgers because they’re simple,” Bailey said of the expansion. “Heard has always been about seeing how good something familiar can become when you obsess over every part of it.”

That obsession now extends past the bun. The Heard Covent Garden flagship arrives in a neighbourhood that runs on volume and footfall, and a two-floor site with its own dessert concept is a bigger bet than either of Heard's first two rooms, one that treats the burger and the nightcap as a single business rather than two.