Roy Ner

Chief Culinary Officer

Acclaimed in Australia, celebrity chef Roy Ner spent 18 years there establishing his culinary credentials and enjoying a lifelong passion for food and hospitality, before he turned his sights onto London when he opened his hugely successful Mayfair Mediterranean restaurant, Jeru, in the winter of 2021. The restaurant offers everything from a bakery to a brunch area, a restaurant, and well-appointed private dining areas.

An exceptional Cordon Bleu-trained chef, Roy has a lifelong passion for gastronomy. He is known for experimenting with innovative new flavour combinations and textures drawn from his eclectic heritage. His mixed heritage has exposed him to a myriad of exotic tastes, herbs, and spices from the Middle Eastern region and beyond, from the countries circling the Mediterranean Sea, from Greece to North Africa. He particularly loves to highlight flavours from traditional and modern cooking, blending cultures and ingredients together to showcase a unique culinary style based on various cooking techniques. His recipes are based on grilling, roasting, fermenting and ageing ingredients using various methods, from koji to fenugreek spice. He also seeks out the more flavoursome exotic herbs and spices to celebrate raw ingredients.

Chef Roy’s early career was spent in the restaurants of Tel Aviv before moving to Australia, where he spent seven years in Sydney’s award-winning restaurant, ARIA. Sustaining two hats as part of the brigade's leadership at this restaurant, the equivalent to two Michelin stars, he then branched out on his own, partnering up with a Sydney local group to create Nour Restaurant. This earned him his own first hat, and he led the kitchen for four years as a partner. Roy is currently The Ambassador for Australian Beef here in the UK.

In Australia, Roy partnered with the Ovolo Hotel Group and opened ‘ZaZaTa’ in Brisbane, Australia, to great acclaim. The restaurant was an immediate success, voted among the top 20 restaurants to visit in Asia Pacific by CNN and among the top 100 in the country by Delicious Magazine in its first year of operation.