Who I Work With
Restaurant groups, hospitality-adjacent businesses, investors, retailers and manufacturers, publishers and cultural institutions.
The thread across the work is that operator experience, legal training and cultural authority sit in one person - a combination that's rare in the UK food industry and useful when the decision is high-stakes or financially significant.
I take a small number of engagements per year, scoped to the problem.
If you think there's a fit, send me a message using the form in the Contact page.
Consultancy & advisory
Advisory work for hospitality-adjacent businesses e.g. tech platforms, suppliers, media and trade bodies serving the restaurant sector. I sat on the OpenTable® UK Restaurant Advisory Board from 2024 to 2026, contributing the independent operator perspective on product development, market trends and the structural pressures facing UK restaurants. Comparable work for businesses whose customers are restaurants but who don't run restaurants themselves.
Pre-opening diligence on new sites and concepts - site selection, lease review, concept-to-numbers stress test, menu architecture, opening plan.
Investor-side review of restaurant and food brand opportunities - concept, operations, founder, numbers - for funds, family offices and private investors looking at hospitality.
Expert witness instructions and expert input on disputes involving hospitality businesses. The lawyer-plus-operator combination is rare. This is where my two professional lives are both required at once, and there is something useful about being the person in the room who can tell you both what the contract says and whether the kitchen could ever have produced what the contract assumed.
Asian product development for manufacturers, retailers and restaurant groups
Malaysian, Peranakan and wider Southeast Asian recipe development, range strategy and cultural authority for businesses building product in this space.
I’ve written two cookbooks on Malaysian cuisine, teach regularly at the Jamie Oliver Cookery School and spent thirteen years working out how this food translates into the British market without losing what makes it true.
The failure mode is usually the same: the product looks right but doesn't taste right to the people who grew up eating it. Reach out at the brief stage, before the recipes are signed off.
Past work includes a range of jarred sauces and laksa pastes developed for retail customers, ready meals developed for Dishpatch and private event catering for corporate clients.
Scope typically covers recipe development and refinement, supplier sourcing for hard-to-find ingredients, range strategy, brand naming and packaging copy and final sign-off on culinary and cultural detail.
Brand partnerships
Ambassadorships, campaign work and editorial collaborations with brands whose values overlap with mine.
Past partnerships include an ad campaign for Jigsaw and Battersea Power Station where I was ambassador for the very first CelebrAsia festival. My work on the latter brought over 154,000 visitors to the power station across that one weekend - at the time, the highest footfall the area had seen.
The work I enjoy here is the kind that lets me bring an actual point of view rather than just a face or an influencer story - a conversation (or several!), a recipe, a dish on a menu. Where there's a real creative brief, I'm interested.
Strongest fit is editorial collaborations, campaigns and ambassadorships with food, drink, lifestyle and cultural brands, rather than influencer-style content.
Media, speaking, editorial and teaching
Broadcast, on-screen contribution, speaking and writing for trade and national press.
Recent broadcast work includes BBC One's Saturday Kitchen, Masterchef: The Professionals and Newsnight, Channel 4's Jamie Oliver’s £1 Wonders and Money Saving Meals and ITV's Nadiya's Family Feasts.
I speak on hospitality economics, the cost of authenticity and what it takes to build and close an independent restaurant in modern Britain.
I write for The Guardian, National Geographic Traveller, Waitrose Food Magazine and Ocado Magazine.
I teach regularly at the Jamie Oliver Cookery School.
Send me a message for guest cooking, expert contribution or longer-form presenting, commissions, panel briefings or programming.
