The Roaming Chef
Ruminating on residencies
This is an edition of Stocktake that focuses on a specific topic: The Roaming Chef.
There’s a huge amount of subthreads to analyse on this ever-expanding subject, but I’ve chosen to focus on London’s current chef residency circuit, offering some solutions for how we might better serve ambitious chefs who want to - one day - open their own restaurant.
I’m a big fan of chef residencies. Tasting novel dishes from emerging talent who are chasing their dreams, and supporting cooks doing it their own way, is a bold and beautiful thing to experience. I spent two years curating the guest chef line up at Carousel (where roaming chefs have been hosted every single week of the year for the last decade) and found providing a platform for those who deserve it, helping them shine under a bigger spotlight and assisting them in their journey to success, to be a very gratifying thing.
Residency spaces are special. At their core they are (or at least I believe should be) inherently supportive, created with the intention of propping up talent and with the aim of introducing their food to a larger audience. These days however, it feels as though more and more spaces opt for a rotating chef programme as a self-promotion tool and a cost-saving exercise, rather than out of love for incubating talent.
Once upon a time, pop ups were more organic: a four hands dinner link up between pals, a one-off occasion to catch before it would never happen again. This style still occurs around London (just this past weekend Hen Wens was at Ancestral, and Gareth Storey was at Tollington’s) and as they happen less often, they’re usually received with a lot of excitement, especially when involving chefs who don’t cook as much IRL e.g. Ixta Belfrage at Rambutan earlier this month.
Since 2020, when the format of restaurant cooking flipped, the roaming chef has been catapulted into commonality. For any ambitious cook with a story to tell, the space is there to be occupied, to go it alone. An industry has been created around residencies - from hosting venues to talent agents - where each month you can find roaming chefs cooking where other roaming chefs have been (or will go very soon) and we find ourselves with a well-trodden pop up circuit. I could name at least 10 locations that have opened in the last couple of years in London, which are positioned as wine bars and facilitate constant chef collaborations. These venues have interchangeable names and project a similar POV online, without a particularly distinct chef selection process.
If there’s no deliberate curation or bespoke infrastructure in place, how can nomadic chefs best promote themselves and sell their long-term dream to diners? I’m not convinced that the familiar residency format, which we’ve become accustomed to as customers and that’s turning into a default set up for certain business owners, serves chefs’ best interests.
None of this is unique to London of course, but we are uniquely over-saturated with residency spaces, while also suffering from one of the highest barriers to entry for setting up a permanent site, which is the end goal for most. Paris and NYC have their own editions, and Paris represents some recent success stories like Jip by Esu Lee, Tarantula by Emmanuel Peña Treviño and the upcoming Cypsèle by Marcin Król. It’s wonderful to see three recently residency-based chefs opening their own places. In NYC, Has Dac Biet is the epitomic example. Sadie and Has roamed the globe with one-night-only dinners and month-long stints for years, and eventually settled in their native city with Ha’s Snack Bar to - from what I can tell online - rave reviews and a lot of support. I ate their food once at Oranj in 2023, and was not blown away, but I put it down to over-hype (on socials and in my mind) and it being their first week in a new space.
With pop ups, it’s hard to guarantee that the cooking will be good. How can a chef create their best food if they have to make do with what’s available in an under-staffed and under-equipped space, with site-specific restrictions? Adjusting to a new environment usually means it won’t be their best work.
And, who makes the money? Sometimes only expenses are covered for chefs, or there’s a small cut of sales on offer, or worse, if invited to cook somewhere picturesque that could double as a holiday, the trip becomes the reimbursement. For venues, changing chef all the time is not as lucrative as having a full-time team and food costs can’t be kept as low if you’re shifting the approach every week, so less profit is made. Plus, pop ups are exhausting to organise and orchestrate.
So who do these residencies serve? The customer with the short attention span, who chases hype and loves newness? Or the chef who gets to test dishes and formats, honing their skill and craft?
From past conversations and experience, most roaming chefs want to settle down - whether in London or back home - with a bricks and mortar site after a time on the road experimenting, exploring and discovering. But it’s one thing to roam, it’s another thing entirely to be subjected to pop up purgatory.
How can we help talented chefs avoid jumping on the circuit in order to build a name for themselves? How can we help expedite the path to a permanent site, and create an alternative route, putting a stop to the endless loop?
Here are three WIP ideas I’ve been thinking about:
1. Elongate Residencies
107 in Clapton has moved to a six month rotation model which started with Julie Hetyei who’s in residence until the end of March (I won’t tell you who’s next, but their cooking is perfect for spring/summer) while Compton Arms in Highbury opts for at-least-a-year-long residencies. When I spoke to Will Gee, owner of 107, about the move to six months, he told me he wants chefs to have the opportunity to get settled and gain confidence in their cooking. To use the space (only induction, no extraction) to master their style, learn more about what customers want and help build a name for themselves. Staying steady allows chefs to experience cooking across the seasons and lets guests experience a different menu each time they visit.
Will’s dream is to have guests back every month to try new wines and plates, and to eventually offer his chef residents PR support as part of the package, ensuring people pay them the attention they deserve. At the Compton Arms - probably the city’s most prolific incubator at this point - we’ve witnessed the success of Four Legs and Tiella, and Rake is now making its mark. Its legacy as a food-pub provides prestige to newcomers, but Freya Coote also deserves credit for helping these chefs and brands make a name for themselves in the media.
Although these residencies aren’t forever, and they’re in spaces that present their own challenges, longevity allows for better menu development and boosted brand awareness, two important requirements for anyone looking to create something of their own in the long term.
2. Build a Directory
Much like in music, where we are venue agnostic but artist loyal, we could do with a Resident Advisor for hospitality. A place that could double as a booking system (this might include a minimum charge that’s later deducted from your bill like other booking apps) but most importantly, acts as a directory of culinary events across London, to increase awareness of happenings and improve our collective understanding of the landscape. Guests can search by their favourite artist (chef) and follow them to the venue they’re playing (cooking) at - or vice versa - and not have to rely on the Instagram algorithm to keep them au fait. This feels like it has legs, but requires a shift in mindset that’s harder to pull off. I’m also skeptical about adding a tech-edge to something that I wish could go back to being more natural.
Then again, the pop up system needs improving and not many platforms consolidate what’s happening in the world of food events, or if they do, it’s a biproduct of their service. I would point you in the direction of London Pop Ups (their newsletter is useful but the design leaves a lot to be desired) or SLOP’s weekly news round ups that touch on culinary happenings every week, but they’re not all encompassing, nor should they be.
An exhaustive directory, as a consistently up-to-date Yellow Pages for chef pop ups, is what we could do with. Who wants to make it?
3. Create a Fund
Can anyone introduce me to foodie London-based VCs? I’m thinking I should write to Nadine of The Stanza, or put a call-out in Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me subscriber chat.
I’d like to build a fund for hospitality talent that wants to open their own space. A collective investment pool that provides capital but also offers an infrastructure to support in the opening process, including the creation of a strong brand narrative and connection to all the necessary individuals needed to bring a design to fruition, from photographers to project managers, builders to accountants. Talent would apply to the programme and each year a certain number of individuals would win support.
An end-to-end talent incubator, almost like the Fashion East of restaurants, but done better, all for a small piece of the pie (and guaranteed fizz on arrival, of course).
If you have any thoughts, I look forward to hearing them!
A very clear and succinct summary here, P
As one of the roaming chefs in question, who’s been in this odd arm of the industry for a decade - the shift from mutually beneficial agreement between chef and venue (we’ll take the hassle of the creativity, staffing and hours of cooking in your venue - and drive your wet sales and PR lines and you give us a cheap, if imperfect, kitchen to cook from) to our labour being written into exploitative business models came quick. There are venues operating entirely on the external inertia of their guest chefs asking for 50% plus of takings, and chefs are so desperate to get their names out, that they’re gladly taking these opportunities.
I get it, but it’s also driven the %’s being asked for through the roof - the whole model is now flawed, unless you find that unicorn of a space that recognises the benefit of the original pop up model.
So so many horrific examples I can think of at the drop of a hat - and so hard to call out as an operator for fear of being seen as a trouble maker.
You raise such good points Pani, and I am sure you're aware that many roaming chefs are being screwed over left, right and centre by these residency spaces. I'm hearing about pop up chefs who are being shuffled like songs on a playlist (apt analogy). Just 5 minutes ago, a friend of mine shared his exasperation with me about how he had been booked into a residency in a small plates/jazz bar venue (vom) who replaced him without notice.