Trailblazers
Ellen Chew
The founder of the delightfully named Chew-On-This, Ellen Chew has championed Asian food in the UK since arriving in London in 2005 having previously worked as a consultant for one of Singapore’s biggest food court operators. As well as establishing an expansive portfolio of Asian-focused restaurants across the UK, including the Cantonese-focused Mrs Chew’s Chinese Kitchen, which has three sites across London and Birmingham; Shan Shui, a Southeast Asian fusion restaurant in Bicester Village and Heathrow Airport; and Asian-influenced bakery concept Arôme, which has two sites in London, she has launched Rasa Sayang restaurant that helps Malaysian and Singaporean food brands get a foothold in the UK market.
Lorraine Copes
With her not-for-profit organisation Be Inclusive Hospitality, award winning entrepreneur Lorraine Copes has worked to accelerate racial equity in hospitality, food, and drink in a bid to build a fairer and more inclusive industry. Be Inclusive Hospitality has invested more than £300,000 in mentorship, qualifications, grant funding, and work experience and holds annual Spotlight Awards that recognise the exceptional talent of Black, Asian, and ethnic minorities working within hospitality, food, and drink, across the UK. Copes is also a member of the board of directors at the Wine and Spirit Trade Association and a part-time speaker, coach, and consultant.
Aktar Islam
Aktar Islam might have started out washing pots and peeling onions at his father’s Solihull restaurant but is completely self-taught when it comes to fine dining. One of a handful of high-profile Indian chefs not to have been trained at top hotels in India, Islam has pioneered a distinctive form of high-end Indian cuisine that recently saw his Birmingham restaurant Opheem awarded a rare second Michelin star.
Douglas McMaster
Launched at the tail-end of 2019, the London incarnation of Douglas McMaster’s ‘zero waste’ restaurant is the result of painstaking work from the ambitious chef and restaurateur to open a restaurant that not only has full respect for the environment, agricultural practices and nutrition but which can also stand shoulder to shoulder with fine dining restaurants across the globe in terms of decor and food. Silo has achieved this aim and influenced many other chefs and restaurateurs in the process.
Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew
Noble Rot burst onto London’s restaurant scene in 2015 and now operates three restaurants in the capital. Owners Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew have been a disruptive force, pioneering a better way of serving wine in restaurants with all-killer-no-filler lists and highly skilled front of house teams. The pair also publish a magazine (also called Noble Rot) and run a consumer-facing wine shop and delivery service called Shrine to the Vine as well as fine wine import business Keeling Andrew & Co, which supplies some of the UK’s best restaurants.
Gareth Ward
While Gareth Ward’s punchy, high-quality ingredient driven cooking is as original as it is brilliant the defining feature of his Wales restaurant Ynyshir is his determination to run it on his own terms. “I go to work for me, I cook for me, I don’t cook for anybody else,” he said recently. Ward’s approach has caused many to rethink the very fundamentals of how - and why - they run their establishments.
Kirk Haworth
Armed with a top-flight cooking CV, Kirk Haworth is one of vanishingly few chefs at his level to completely eschew animal products. His cooking is characterised by attention to detail, clever technique and a steadfast refusal to fall back on the clichés of plant-based cookery. His Plates restaurant started life as a pop-up in 2017 but recently acquired permanent digs in Shoreditch and is now one of the capital’s most oversubscribed restaurants.
Andrew Wong
It’s difficult to think of a UK chef who has done more for the image of Chinese food in recent times than Andrew Wong. Opened in 2012, his two Michelin star Victoria restaurant A Wong showcases the intricacy and scope of Chinese food in a thrilling and accessible manner, shining a light on the clever and often complex techniques behind many Chinese dishes. Wong also works with food anthropologist Mukta Das to explore the history of the Chinese kitchen.
Jeremy Chan and Iré Hassan-Odukale
Friends Jeremy Chan and Iré Hassan-Odukale launched Ikoyi in 2017 with little formal training between them. They remain largely unconfined by restaurant conventions, with gifted chef Chan creating a culinary style that defies categorisation. The result is a singular dining experience the Canadian-Chinese-British chef terms “a journey through bold heat”. In 2022, the restaurant moved from its tiny original home to a larger and more prominent site within Brutalist creative hub 180 The Strand.
Brett Graham
Brett Graham reopened The Ledbury in 2022 following a two-year pandemic-related hiatus. The Notting Hill restaurant was already one of the capital’s most beloved restaurants, but the Australian-born chef has doubled down with a longer, more gastronomically ambitious menu that has seen the restaurant once again named the best in the UK by the National Restaurant Awards and go from two to three Michelin stars. In addition to running his flagship Graham also has a hand in highly-rated Fulham gastropub The Harwood Arms and a number of farming projects that supply high-end ingredients to top restaurants across the country.
Ashley Saxton
When Ashley Saxton arrived at Harrods five years ago bosses were closing restaurants to put in more retail. It’s now the other way round, with shopping areas being scaled back to accommodate more F&B. As director for restaurants and kitchens, Saxton has bought some of the globe’s most renowned chefs to the world-famous department store including Björn Frantzén and Masayoshi ‘Masa’ Takayama. There’s more to come too, with another (as-yet unnamed) tranche of top international chefs set to set up shop at Harrods next year.
Tommy Banks
One of the UK’s key-practitioners of farm-to-table cuisine, Tommy Banks' North Yorkshire empire comprises a brace of Michelin-starred restaurants - The Black Swan at Oldstead and Roots - and the more recently launched The Abbey Inn. Banks has further extended his reach with a premium nationwide food box delivery and events service (Made in Oldstead); a canned wine venture (Banks Brothers); and a partnership with Lord’s cricket ground in London.
Florence Mae Maglanoc and Omar Shah
London’s burgeoning Filipino food scene is primarily down to the efforts and innovation of Florence Mae Maglanoc and Omar Shah, whose Maginhawa Group operates a varied restaurant and cafe portfolio across the capital. These include London’s first Filipino ice cream parlour Mamasons, Filipino bakery Panadera, and fusion ramen concept Ramo Ramen. The pair are almost single-handedly responsible for bringing the purple-coloured Filipino yam ube into the mainstream and continue to champion lesser-known ingredients in creative ways.
Asma Khan
Asma Khan is one of only two only UK-based chefs to have had an episode of Netflix documentary Chef’s Table dedicated to them, which goes a long way to showing the influence of the Indian chef and restaurateur. Khan has been at the forefront of promoting women in hospitality, creating female-only teams in her restaurant, and has been vocal in demanding equality in the restaurant industry. Her Soho restaurant Darjeeling Express may only be small, but Khan’s impact on the UK restaurant scene has been large and wide-reaching.
Santiago Lastra
Mexican chef Santiago Lastra went out on a limb when he decided to launch a high-end fine dining Mexican restaurant in London, but boy has it paid off, with KOL currently ranked at number 17 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. His new more casual restaurant Fonda builds on this success, with the aim of bringing high-quality Mexican food to more people. Mexican food is having something of a moment in the capital, and some of this success can be traced back to Lastra’s vision and ability to change people’s perceptions of Mexican food in this country.
Clare Smyth
Clare Smyth remains the first and only female UK chef to run a restaurant that’s been awarded three Michelin stars and is one of the most successful chefs to come out of the Gordon Ramsay stable. As well as her Notting Hill restaurant Core she runs Oncore by Clare Smyth in Sydney and recently launched her own knife brand Cutler & Smyth. There are rumours that Smyth is to open another London restaurant in a forthcoming super premium hotel, so watch this space.
Sally Abé
As well as being an accomplished chef in her own right, having previously led the kitchen at renowned London pub The Harwood Arms and now overseeing operations at her own Westminster restaurant The Pem, Sally Abé has been at the forefront of giving women a voice in the often male-dominated world of professional kitchens. To that end, Abé hosts an annual International Women’s Day event at The Pem that brings women from across the industry together and gives them a platform to show others that hospitality can be a viable career path.
Gary Usher
Gary Usher has been instrumental in demonstrating the potential for growing a restaurant business through crowdfunding, with much of the chef’s Elite Bistros group having been funded through rewards-based crowdfunds, with most of the finance coming from supporters effectively buying their meals in advance. Elite Bistros now consists of six restaurants in northwest England, a meal kit business and a gastropub, with the chef now on the hunt for a second pub site to launch next year.
Monika Linton
Credited as ‘the woman who made Britain fall in love with Spanish food’, Brindisa owner Monika Linton has had a profound impact on the UK’s dining landscape. Even with the ongoing challenges posed by Brexit, Monika Linton remains a leading importer and wholesaler of fine and artisanal Spanish foods. Her restaurant business, meanwhile, continues to grow, with the planned growth of Brindisa’s more casual offshoot brand Bar Kroketa demonstrating the group’s ability to evolve with the times.
Jules Pearson
There is perhaps no one in the UK restaurant industry as busy as Jules Pearson. The global VP of F&B development at hotel giant Ennismore, Pearson’s burgeoning portfolio encompasses more than 300 restaurant project globally. With her ear to the ground, Pearson knows what diners want and her influence on the London restaurant scene is plain to see with the ever-rising popularity of natural wine and the proliferation of trendier and more regionally focused restaurants in both the Asian and Middle Eastern space having long been championed by her.
Adejoké Bakare
Few chefs have had as good a year as Adejoké Bakare. Less than 12 months on from relocating her modern West African restaurant Chishuru from Brixton to Fitzrovia, the London-based chef is now the proud holder of numerous awards including a coveted Michelin star. Seismic shifts in the culinary world can often be traced back to an individual and with Bakare and her accessible and contemporary cooking the food of West Africa now has its champion.
Petra Barran and Simon Mitchell
In the 10 years since its launch, Petra Barran and Simon Mitchell’s KERB brand has evolved from street food champion to business incubator, food hall operator and event caterer. Now the pair are looking to take their business global with the opening of Saluhall, their first plant-forward food hall, which recently opened in Stateside in San Francisco; and the impending launch of their first KERB-branded site overseas in Berlin, Germany.
Kate Nicholls
Having led the industry’s leading trade body UKHospitality since 2018, Kate Nicholls has helped shepherd the sector through crisis after crisis, including the Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing struggles with inflation. Her legacy is significant and has ensured that the sector has a greater voice in Parliament, especially at times when many businesses are crying out for support.
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