The Progress 1000: London's most influential people 2019 – Going Out: Food & Drink

Fay Maschler

Evening Standard restaurant critic
As queen of the capital’s food scene with 47 years of reviewing under her belt, the doyenne of London dining remains the most trustworthy, reliable voice in restaurant criticism. Long may her reign continue.

Jimi Famurewa

Evening Standard Magazine restaurant critic | NEW
Since he started last year, ES Magazine’s critic has become an influential new voice in the London restaurant world. Following his own tastes and discovering little-known gems, Famurewa is a distinct voice in a crowded market.

Tomos Parry

Head chef, Brat | NEW
The former Kitty Fisher’s chef is the brains behind the capital’s hottest restaurant, Hackney’s Brat, with its open fire and celebrity following. The name is the nickname of Parry’s star dish, turbot, which helped earn him a Michelin star just six months after opening. Expect big things.

Robin and Sarah Gill

Restaurant owners | NEW
The husband and wife team behind Clapham restaurants The Dairy and The Manor have earned themselves a loyal following with their group of restaurants — and just scored another hit with their latest, Darby’s, next to the new American embassy in Nine Elms. Look out for the Darby’s delivery vans, too. There’s no pausing for this pair.

Clodagh McKenna

Chef | NEW
After training at Ballymaloe and shaking up the farmers’ market scene in Cork, McKenna made her way to London, quickly becoming a TV hit and landing a weekly recipe column in the Standard.

Lilly Newell

Group executive director, Caprice Holdings | NEW
For more than a decade, Newell has handled the behemoth that is Caprice Holdings — which counts the Ivy, Brasserie of Light and Scott’s among its holdings — with enviable panache. In a difficult period for traditional fine dining, Newell recalibrated and revived her old stalwarts, so once again they’re leading the charge.

Ravinder Bhogal

Chef-patron, Jikoni | NEW
Well out from under the influence of Gordon Ramsay, Bhogal always excites at her melting pot of a restaurant in Marylebone. Combining Indian, African, British influences, Bhogal is at the cutting edge of what London’s restaurants are capable of.

Daniel Morgenthau and Will Lander

Founders, Woodhead Restaurant Group
Having Clipstone, Portland and The Quality Chop House wasn’t enough for this pair, which is just as well — new Mayfair Italian Emilia has been a bona fide hit. With last year’s Quality Wines, in Farringdon, they stepped out of straight restaurants and into retail. Watching where they’ll go next is half the fun following this lot.

Clare Smyth

Chef patron, Core
Smyth continues her reign as arguably London’s best chef, converting those who come into Notting Hill’s Core with the humble potato. With Smyth going straight into this year’s Michelin guide with two stars, all eyes are on her to see if she can make it a hat-trick in 2020.

The Sethi family

Restaurant owners
The sibling team behind JKS Restaurants continue to teach the capital’s other restaurant groups how it’s done. They now operate fifteen eateries across the capital, having just added Lyle’s hit sibling Flor to the roll call. Alongside Lyle’s, they’ve Michelin stars at Trishna, Gymkhana and Kitchen Table, but have cornered the casual market too, with the likes of Bao and Bubbledogs. Truly, London wouldn’t eat the same way without them.

Ryan Chetiyawardana

Drinks and bar innovator
When his bar was voted the World’s Best last year, the cocktail king closed it down and opened a new one. Lyaness at Sea Containers soon became a new hotspot with its eco-conscious, imaginative drinks. With a focus on sustainability, Chetiyawardana is doing more than his fair share to propel the drinks industry forward.

Ben Chapman and Brian Hannon

Co-founders of Super 8 restaurants | NEW
Their innovative, award-winning take on Thai food means there are still queues around the block for Soho’s Kiln and Shoreditch’s Smoking Goat. Rightly so. The pair forged further success when they launched Brat with Tomos Parry, and with the opening confirmed their position as one of London’s most exciting, innovative restaurant groups. The future is bright.

Sam and James Hart, and Crispin Somerville, owners, the Hart Group

Co-owners, Harts Group
The group behind Quo Vadis’s rebirth and the huge phenomenon of Barrafina, the Harts Group has been the driving force behind Coal Drops Yard in King’s Cross which, despite a slow start, has picked up to be one of London’s leading foodie hubs.

Victor Lugger, Tigrane Seydoux

Founders, Big Mamma Group | NEW
An Italian run by two French boys shouldn’t have been a hit, but it was: Shoreditch spot Gloria took over Instagram, wowed influencers and charmed a few critics besides. The coolest restaurant in London? Probably. Now they’ve followed it up with another Italian called Circolo Popolare in Fitzrovia, which is still drawing queues.

Ryan Riley

Founder, Life Kitchen Cookery School | NEW
After losing his mother to lung cancer, Ryan Riley didn’t give up; instead, he started cooking in Camden, then founded the Life Kitchen, which offers free cookery classes for those living with the disease. A force for good in food circles, it’s little surprise Nigella Lawson is among his fans.

Elizabeth Haigh

Chef, Kaizen House | NEW
She won a Michelin star as the founding head chef at Pidgin and is now striking out on her own with residencies under her new project Kaizen House. With successes at Mortimer House and Clapton’s Wander restaurant, and a burgeoning YouTube channel, Haigh looks set to continue her positive impact on the restaurant scene.

Natalia Ribbe, Libby Andrews and Grace Welch

Founders, Ladies of Restaurants | NEW
Women have long been under-represented in London’s kitchens; LOR’s fightback has been going from strength to strength with their talks and networking nights. Having recently hired their first employee, the initiative is only set to grow and grow.

Margot and Fergus Henderson

Chef-patrons, Rochelle Canteen and St John
This power couple of cooking are living proof London can have its cake and eat it. Besides running some of London’s best-loved restaurants, they’re a firm fixture on the foodie party circuit.

Jeremy Chan and Ire Hassan-Odukale

Founders of Ikoyi | NEW
Rarely is a restaurant truly innovative, but Ikoyi is. Despite difficult early days, Chan and Hassan-Odukale’s captivating West African-British restaurant in St James’s Market is widely regarded as London’s most exciting eatery.

Meriel Armitage, Luke McLaughlin

Owners, The Spread Eagle | NEW
In a different universe, “London’s first vegan pub” was little more than the perfect tweet; these two made it real, and kept it going. The Spread Eagle in Homerton is an innovative hit, and placed highly on the Standard’s list of London’s 50 best boozers.

Max and Noel Venning

Owners, Three Sheets, Little Mercies, Bar Three | NEW
Two brothers from Manchester, one’s called Noel. Ring any bells? To anyone on the cocktail circuit, it’ll be the Vennings who spring to mind first. As well as their small, award-winning empire of bars, the pair are influencing drinks lists at watering holes across the city, too.

Jackson Boxer and Andrew Clarke

Chef-patrons of Orasay, Brunswick House, St Leonard’s | NEW
Boxer and Clarke remain among London’s most formidable restaurant teams; this year Clarke backed Boxer’s new Notting Hill opening, Orasay, while their other sites, St Leonard’s and Brunswick House, remain as popular as ever.

Asma Khan

Founder, Darjeeling Express | NEW
The first British chef to be featured on Netflix’s Chef’s Table, Khan and her all-female team at acclaimed Indian Darjeeling Express remain at the forefront of conversations over kitchen equality.

Max Dubiel and Ted Rosner

Founders of Redemption Roasters | NEW
Rosner and Dubiel’s social enterprise Redemption Roasters — which trains offenders for careers in coffee, whether serving, selling or roasting it — has gone from strength to strength, and is now operating four coffee shops, while also serving 100 wholesale clients.

Max Halley

Owner of Max’s Sandwich Shop | NEW
The well-loved Stroud Green eccentric remains the go-to champion of sandwiches, determined to make them more than just lunch fare. Halley is a refreshingly iconoclastic figure in the food world, and a good reminder not to take things too seriously.

Chris Corbin and Jeremy King

Corbin & King, co-founders
Corbin and King have been in business together for almost 40 years. They are the creators of some of London’s finest of dining experiences including, The Wolseley, Brasserie Zedel and Fischer’s. They opened The Ivy in 1990.

Shamil Thakrar

Dishoom, co-founder
Since opening his first Dishoom in Covent Garden back in 2010, Thrakrar has now added five new London locations, including his latest under the Evening Standard office in Kensington. In December Dishoom will be opening another location in Manchester.

Lucy Carr-Ellison and Jemima Jones

Tart London founders | NEW
Chefs Lucy and Jemima, founders of chic catering outfit Tart London, are at the forefront of delicious, seasonal and inventive cooking – with a new restaurant coming soon.

Jason Atherton

Chef and founder of Pollen Street Social
The founder of Pollen Street Social, who used to work with Gordon Ramsay, opened The Betterment in Mayfair earlier this year and recently starred in The Chef’s Brigade on BBC2.

Melissa and Jasmine Hemsley

Chefs and food writers | NEW
Founders of Hemsely + Hemsley, television stars and prolific authors, Jasmine and Melissa’s first book, The Art of Eating Well, helped to kick-start the clean-eating movement. The capital’s favourite foodie sisters are currently working on their own projects, including Jasmine’s book East by West, which is due in November.

Henry Dimbleby

Leon restaurants, co-founder
Dimbleby, the son of BBC broadcaster David Dimbleby, is founder of the Sustainable Restaurant Association and co-founder of restaurant chain Leon alongside John Vincent. He was chosen by the former Environment Secretary, Michael Gove, to lead the first major review of the UK’s food strategy in almost 75 years.

Ben Elliot

Quintessentially, co-founder | NEW
Elliot, who co-founded the global concierge and lifestyle management firm, Quintessentially, is Britain’s first Food Tsar, also completed a 400-mile cycle from Austria to Slovenia in aid of The Felix Project.

The Progress 1000, in partnership with the global bank Citi, is the Evening Standard’s celebration of the people changing London’s future for the better. #Progress1000