LONDON'S HOSPITALITY HEROES

Our Special Time Well Spent Award, Recognising the Capital's Most Inspirational Chefs and Restaurateurs

Our special Hospitality Hero Award recognises outstanding achievements from the capital’s most inspiring chefs and restaurateurs, who keep our city at the centre of the culinary map.

This year’s Time Well Spent Awards nominees for London's Hospitality Heroes have been announced below, and the ultimate winner will be crowned in August.

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David Carter

Born and raised in Barbados and inspired by his constant foodie pilgrimages around the world, David Carter has been blowing up London’s food scene since moving here in 2008, with a succession of acclaimed and wonderfully diverse restaurants.

His first restaurant Smokestak started as a street food stall before opening its permanent Shoreditch home in 2016, where its slow cooked, excellent value meats - and dishes like crispy ox cheek with anchovy mayo - earned it a Bib Gourmand award from Michelin and cemented its place as one of the capital’s best barbecue restaurants.

He followed this with Manteca, an exceptional British-Italian restaurant, with nose-to-tail cooking, hand-rolled pastas, fire-cooked cuts to share and wood-fired bread. This and dishes like its ’nduja steamed mussels and crispy pig skin ragù, bagged it a Bib Gourmand.

His most recent (and most ambitious) venture is OMA - which earned a Michelin star in February, less than a year after opening and is one of London’s most affordable, and extraordinary Michelin restaurants. The serene Borough destination is inspired by the tranquility and romance of the Greek isles and serves orgasmic sharing dishes, from oxtail, topped with bone marrow and beef fat with orzo pasta, to fluffy wild-farmed laffa, and citrusy chalkstream trout crudo.

Beneath OMA is its sister restaurant, the more relaxed and buzzy Agora, a Bib Gourmand souvla bar, specialising in skewers and the same, sexy dips and flatbreads as the hotspot upstairs.

Our pick is OMA, 3 Bedale St, London SE1 9AL

Adejoké Bakare

Adejoké Bakare made history last year as the first Black woman in the UK - and only the second worldwide - to earn a Michelin star, for Chishuru in Fitzrovia.

The self-taught chef from Nigeria is leading London’s West African food movement, as the trailblazing founder and Head Chef of the modern West African restaurant, which started in 2020 after she won a Brixton Village competition to open a three-month pop-up restaurant.

The opportunity inspired Adejoké to finally realise her lifelong dreams of pursuing a career in food, and after pop-ups around London, Chishuru found a permanent home in 2023 in Fitzrovia.

Innovative and bold dishes include her signature firewood grilled, spicy and buttery cow tongue, served with bone marrow emulsion; and favourites like the scotch bonnet with ekuru, and caramelised onion and lemon with guinea fowl yassa.

It’s a yassa from us and everybody else who has visited her elegant and welcoming destination.

Chishuru, 3 Great Titchfield St., London W1W 8AX

Chantelle Nicholson

This multi-award-winning chef, restaurateur, author and sustainability advocate is one of the leading female voices in the UK’s hospitality industry.

Her Mayfair restaurant, Apricity launched in 2022 and earned a Michelin Green Star the following year, which she’s maintained since, for reinventing what veg-forward, conscious cooking can be.

Originally from New Zealand, she walked away from a career in law to pursue her true passion - food. And she is dedicated to creating a more sustainable and holistic future across her operations and activities.

She is also an independent board member for ReLondon, an ambassador for Chefs in Schools, a member of City Harvest’s Food Council, and an advocate for many other charitable organisations and author of hit, plant-based cookbook, Planted.

And if that’s not all, this plant-powered Superwoman has just launched a new, regenerative countryside hub in Sussex. The Cordia Collective - a new, eco-friendly cafe, bakery and restaurant - is centred around her regenerative farming ethos.

Apricity, 68 Duke St, London W1K 6JU

Scott Collins

Smashed burger king, Scott Collins led the way in meaty, Americana food with great cocktails and music, and Londoners followed like eager Bisto Kids.

The restaurant and pub owner made the meaty love child with Yianni Papoutsis, starting out as MEATwagon burgers, and then opening a MEATeasy pop-up in New Cross, where they sparked a burger revolution with the deliciously dirty, Dead Hippie - two French Mustard-fried patties with gooey cheese, onions, pickles, and their secret sauce.

From there, they moved on to the legendary Welbeck street meat Mecca for seven years, before exploding across the capital and beyond, in unexpected locations, like a former Citroen Garage and an ex Christian mission.

And in February, he launched his newest venue, Covent Garden’s BLOODsports, showing live sport peppered with horror movies, alongside pinball and arcade machines, killer Monkey Fingers and Chicago Dogs, and a ‘Psychobooth’ photobooth inspired by the Psycho shower scene.

Meatliquor - numerous location

Clare Smyth MBE

Clare Smyth is the first and only female chef to be awarded three Michelin stars for her restaurant Core by Clare Smyth in Notting Hill.

The elegant, fine-dining restaurant focuses on natural, sustainable food, using British produce from dedicated farmers.

She trained in some of the most celebrated kitchens in the world including Alain Ducasse’s Le Louis XV in Monaco, and worked under Gordon Ramsay for 13 years, becoming Chef Patron of three Michelin-starred Restaurant Gordon Ramsay before opening her own restaurant.

In 2021, she opened her second restaurant, Oncore in Australia. which instantly secured three hats.

Unsurprisingly, in 2013 she was awarded an MBE for services to the hospitality industry, and was later honoured with a Doctorate by Queen's University Belfast for her expertise in the hospitality industry.

She dedicates her time outside the kitchen to mentoring the next generation, as the President of the Bocuse d'Or UK team as well as working with assorted charities that are close to her heart.

Core by Clare Smyth, 92 Kensington Park Rd, London W11 2PN

Douglas McMaster

At the age of just 21, Douglas McMaster won BBC’s Best Young Chef Award and has made culinary history ever since, as chef, author, presenter and owner of Silo, the world’s first Zero Waste restaurant.

In 2012, he worked under the legendary artist and Zero Waste visionary Joost Bakker, who challenged him to ‘not have a bin,’ which fuelled his passion for finding innovative (and delicious) solutions to tackle food waste.

He went on to present a TEDTalk called ‘Waste Is A Failure Of The Imagination’ and has become a public speaker on the future of food. In 2014, he opened Silo, the first Zero Waste restaurant, which he describes as a ‘pre-industrial food system’.

Doug is also a regular lecturer and faculty member for the MAD Academy, where he inspires the next generation of leaders to think differently about food systems, waste, and the industry.

Silo, The White Building, Unit 7 1st Floor, c/o CRATE Bar, Unit 7 Queen's Yard, London E9 5EN

Luke Ahearne

In February, less than a year after Luke opened his sophisticated Mediterranean bistro, Lita in Marylebone - it bagged its first Michelin star.

Combining quality British ingredients – like Scottish langoustines and Norfolk quail - with open fire cooking and the seasonal flavours of Southern Europe, Luke has found his way to Londoner’s hearts by filling their stomachs with smoked Basque sardines and Strozzapreti with duck ragu, as head chef at the restaurant.

Guests - and the A-list clientele it now attracts - can watch Luke at work via its grand, open kitchen.

The Irishman hails from Tipperary, and helped his mum make sandwiches for special needs children at her school from age nine, then worked at his dad’s cafe and ran it for two years from the age of just 18. Then, after four years at Michelin restaurant, Campagne in Kilkenny, he set his sights on London.

Here he started work at two Michelin star restaurant, The Clove Club, and ran its sister restaurant Luca for four years before taking on the role as Head Chef at Corrigan’s Mayfair, when he was just 29.

Lita, 7-9 Paddington St, Marylebone, London W1U 5QH

Henry Harris

One of London’s most loved restaurateurs, Henry Harris is chef and co owner of Bouchon Racine and the 300-year-old Three Compasses pub beneath it in Farringdon.

The classic bistro offers a masterclass in ballsy French cooking, with dishes including crispy skinned rabbit wrapped in smoked bacon, duck confit and steak tartare.

Restaurant critics were falling over each other to applaud it when it opened in 2022, following the closure of his Racine restaurant in 2002, which was an iconic Knightsbridge institution.

Bouchon Racine, Upstairs at Three Compasses, Upstairs, 66 Cowcross St, London EC1M 6BP

David Moore

Irish restaurateur, entrepreneur and TV personality, David Moore is the founder of London’s longest standing Michelin star restaurant, Pied à Terre.

He opened the legendary, French fine dining institution on Charlotte Street in 1991, bagging its first Michelin just 13 months after opening, and following it up with a second, five years later.

The restaurant rose like a Phoenix from the ashes, after a fire forced it to close for a year in 2005. In a now legendary hospitality story, Moore kept the entire team on, sending them to gain experience elsewhere, while he had it rebuilt, redecorated and resurrected.

It went on to be voted Restaurant Magazine's Best Restaurant in the World in 2007, and continues to hoover up accolades, from four AA Rosettes to the UK's No1 Vegan Tasting Experience.

When he’s not working front of house at the restaurant in his trademark, jazzy shirts, David can be found on telly boxes in shows like BBC MasterChef: The Professionals, or The Restaurant, where he appeared alongside his former mentor, Raymond Blanc.

Pied-à-Terre, 34 Charlotte St., London W1T 2NH

Matt Harris

From fast cars to fast food, former F3 race car driver transformed London’s fried chicken scene, by swapping his race suit for chef whites and opening Thunderbird Fried Chicken.

During a move to America’s Deep South for NASCAR - where his racing career finally ended - he discovered a passion for fried chicken and barbecue, inspiring him to come back to the UK and open a BBQ food truck.

One dish stood out and bagged him an award - his buffalo wings, with a crispier coating, tender meat, deeper sauce flavour, pickled celery, and truffle oil in blue cheese

This led him to close the truck and focus on creating London’s trailblazing fried chicken, and Thunderbird Fried Chicken was born in 2017. I t now has seven restaurants across London, from Canary Wharf and Charing Cross to The O2.

Thunderbird Fried Chicken, assorted London locations

Roop Partap Choudhary

Restaurateur and hotelier, Roop Partap Choudhary is celebrated for introducing authentic, forward-thinking Indian cuisine to London, with his luxury Indian restaurants, Colonel Saab in Trafalgar Square and Holborn, which have been hoovering up prestigious awards.

Before opening his flagship Holborn destination in 2021, he spent a year travelling India by car, train and foot, retracing his father (Colonel Saab’s) footsteps and collecting recipes from palaces, homes and markets.

His father’s Indian Army postings enabled Roop to experience the continent's rich diversity of food from traditional local lunches in the tents of Rajasthan to banquets hosted by Indian nobility and Maharajas, which formed the basis for his London destinations.

The restaurants are filled with museum-worthy art and artefacts collected by his family in India and painstakingly brought back to London.

Unsurprisingly the restaurants have become celebrity hotspots - welcoming everybody from Jennifer Coolidge, Phil Dunster and Jonathan Ross to Malala Yousafzai - but also foodies and Indians, excited about experiencing authoritative Indian fine dining.

Colonel Saab - Trafalgar Square and Holborn locations