Berni Inn

It was established by brothers Frank and Aldo Berni, who modelled the chain on restaurants they had seen in America.

[1] By 1970 the chain comprised 147 hotels and restaurants, including the New Inn at Gloucester, the Mitre at Oxford and several in Japan.

[4] Unlike other restaurants, Berni Inns did not do their own butchery but bought in quality steaks already prepared.

[4] The most frequently ordered meal, even as late as the 1980s, was prawn cocktail, steak and Black Forest gateau.

As Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham note in their 1997 book The Prawn Cocktail Years, "cooked as it should be, this much derided and often ridiculed dinner is still something very special indeed".