What is next for the fine dining chefs?

After a run of closures within the fine dining sector in recent years, what is next for all that incredible talent?

We have a queue of exceptionally talented Head Chefs looking for their next role, not knowing what the future looks like for their area of the industry. This week we gained a new Michelin star Head Chef role, the first time we have had a job of this nature in over a year, and the crowds went wild.

I don’t need to raise the question about why guests are not splashing out on luxury meals on the reg and why fine dining as a concept isn’t as in demand as it was. We know that more people are enjoying good quality, relaxed but excellently cooked food, over refinement, it’s not new news.

But one thing I know with a few years of Home under my belt, is that (unlike front of house mgmt), fine dining chefs are so rarely willing to switch between relaxed dining and fine dining, it’s always been either or. But we are now finding the conversations more frequent, where renowned chefs from refined backgrounds are asking what a transition into something less fine looks like for them. But the second they arrive in that setting for their trial, they can’t hack it and don’t want to hack it. So many see it as too high volume and somewhere they wouldn’t be able to use the skill and attention to detail that got them passionate about being a chef in the first place.

Side note: if you ask any fine dining Head Chef what their favourite restaurant is when they aren’t at work they will almost always say Kiln, Smoking Goat, Brawn, St John or Rita’s etc, never fine dining. Which always fascinates me.

So often when an exceptionally talented fine dining chef does go for a more relaxed concept, because they know it offers them better career longevity, potentially as much (if not more) publicity and a crucially more bums on seats, magic does seem to happen. If you look at the Fat Duck alumni moving on to launch the Devonshire, the background of chef Stevie Parle has recruited for Town, and Luke Ahearne making perfect fuss free food at Lita, it shows it’s a formula that works. I hope that more of the chefs unwilling to embrace a more relaxed approach will learn to reconsider their path, because it’s clearly what the majority of people want and is no less delicious. If you look at the the CV’s of some of the coolest and most innovative chefs we have in London, you might be shocked at how many of them began in the finest Michelin hot spots of the early noughties.