Gunpowder (Tower Bridge)

On 31 March 2026 the restaurant's own verified account posted: "As of today, our Tower Bridge restaurant will be closed. We are figuring things out with the landlord and will have more for you soon" (@gunpowder_london).

Why go

You do not, and that is the useful part. Four months on, OpenTable, TheFork, SevenRooms, DesignMyNight, Yelp and the landlord's own One Tower Bridge page were all still selling this restaurant. The group's own website lists Spitalfields, Soho and Lisbon, and Time Out has retitled its page "Gunpowder (CLOSED)". The Food Standards Agency has no registration for 4 Duchess Walk at all.

It was not a failure of cooking. Stefan Chomka interviewed Harneet Baweja for Restaurant on 27 January 2026, and the piece records that the Tower Bridge lease was up for renewal and needed conversations with landlords. Nine weeks later the shutter came down (Restaurant).

Here is what it was. Gunpowder opened at White's Row in Spitalfields in 2016, and this second room arrived at One Tower Bridge in October 2018, two floors over a bakery, more than double the covers, polished marble and vintage red leather with the bridge outside. Kavi Shah gave it four stars for Time Out in April 2019 and put dinner for two at around £95 (Time Out).

Where to go instead: Gunpowder Spitalfields, 11 White's Row E1 7NF, which is the site that holds the Michelin Bib Gourmand on the current 2026 London list, or Gunpowder Soho at 20 Greek Street. Both carry an FSA rating of 5.

Order this / avoid

• Order, historically: the duck leg in sweet and spicy tomato sambal with crisp parsnip ribbons, which head chef Nirmal Save wrote for this room and which Shah rated above everything else on the table. The whole seared head of broccoli in its creamy, tangy sauce. The aloo chaat.
• Avoid: booking. The aggregators have not caught up. Also avoid treating anything written about Spitalfields as evidence about this address, including the Bib Gourmand.

What locals & experts say

• Kavi Shah, Time Out London, four stars out of five, April 2019, reviewing this address: "Split over two floors, this riverside spot is much bigger than the Spitalfields original, and it has a more stylish, contemporary design (polished marble floors, vintage red leather seating), jazzily offset by a soundtrack of old-school Indian tracks." On the duck: "A hunk of tender meat arrived slathered in a sweet and spicy tomato sambal, with crisp parsnip ribbons for the contrast of sweetness and crunch." Her closing line: "Tower Bridge: you've finally got the destination restaurant you've been waiting for." The page now says CLOSED in its title. ref
• Harneet Baweja, founder, to Stefan Chomka in January 2026, on what the group is: "I'm not going to transport you to India. I want you to feel like you're in London, where you can get some great food from the sub-continent and some nice French wine." On growth: "I wish I had this bigger vision, but I don't. I just want to do the same thing well every day." That is the operator on his own business, so it reads as motive rather than endorsement. ref
• No chef vote. All 622 lines of the London industry-vote file were searched on 1 August 2026 and no working cook or operator in the corpus has named any Gunpowder site.

Good to know

• Status: shut since 31 March 2026, with the landlord situation unresolved in the operator's own words. Watch open, next check 1 November 2026.
• Where it was: 4 Duchess Walk, One Tower Bridge SE1 2SD. London Bridge tube.
• Sites: four, and this is the only one that is not trading. Spitalfields, 11 White's Row E1 7NF, opened 2016, holds the Michelin Bib Gourmand on the current 2026 London list. Soho, 20 Greek Street W1D 4DU, opened 2021. Lisbon, in Chiado, opened late 2022.
• The bakery underneath: the unit opened with Custard, a Gunpowder-team bakery by day and wine bar by night, with the restaurant arriving above it a month later. In November 2024 the Notting Hill bakery Moi et Toi took that space and ran 08:00 to noon, handing over as Gunpowder started lunch. Neither trades here now.
• Hygiene: no FSA record exists for 4 Duchess Walk across four query shapes. The siblings do have them and they are not this row's: Spitalfields rating 5 on 17 April 2025, Soho rating 5 on 14 May 2024.
• Diet: the group's menus mark vegetarian dishes with (v). That is the only dietary statement the operator makes.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: none. His saved-places export carries an empty note for the row "Gunpowder Tower Bridge", so nothing is attributed to him. The master CSV line describing home-style Indian small plates near Tower Bridge is curation's wording, and it is now a description of something that has stopped.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

listed — You cannot eat here. Gunpowder's own verified account posted on 31 March 2026 that the Tower Bridge restaurant was closed as of that day and that they were figuring things out with the landlord, and the group's website now lists Spitalfields, Soho and Lisbon and nothing else. Stefan Chomka had reported nine weeks earlier that this lease was up for renewal, so the reason looks like rent rather than cooking. What it was, for the record, was good: Kavi Shah gave it four stars for Time Out in April 2019, head chef Nirmal Save cooked dishes here that ran nowhere else in the group, and the duck leg under tomato sambal with crisp parsnip was the one she singled out. The room was two floors of marble and red leather with the bridge outside, more than double the size of the original. None of that helps you tonight. The Bib Gourmand people associate with the name belongs to Gunpowder Spitalfields at 11 White's Row, which is where the send goes, with Soho on Greek Street behind it. This row stays on the board because the story is not finished and because six booking sites are still taking an interest in it.