Mikkeler

In April 2021, Owen was appointed as Executive Chef Consultant by Mikkeller, a Danish-owned speciality brewing company with bars in the US, Europe and Asia. The venue at Exmouth Market is a fully functioning brewery with a bar inside it where most of the beers offered are made onsite by a full time team of expert brewers with creative freedom to experiment. The brief from one of the owners, Rick Astley and the group headquarters, was to develop and install the operation of an ingredient-led fast food concept that utilised seasonal British produce of the highest quality and which complemented Mikkeller's innovative beer culture and its Danish origin. The full concept including menu development, kitchen design, recruitment of the team and setting up a management and training system for day to day operations was conceived to be scalable to other sites.

North Street Kitchen (NSK), Fowey, Cornwall

Owen spent the 2020 summer season in Cornwall developing and running a new pop-up concept for the Brut Group (Primeur, Westerns Laundry, Jolene, Fitzroy and Big Jo). North Street Kitchen is set in an old boat house with an enviable position in one o the most beautiful locations in the British Isles. There, he made use of a wealth of foraged ingredients from the surrounding Cornish Coast and established relationships with local farmers, producers and fishermen. The success of the pop-up at NSK was such that it has reopened for the 2021 and now the 2022 season with plans to redevelop the building this winter into a permanent operation.

Early Years

   Owen was born in 1979 in Blackpool, England

he grew up as part of a sizeable family with three brothers and four sisters.

   From an early age he helped his mother Diana cook meals for the whole family, he had an early interest in food, cooking, learning and being productive. He spent his formative years as part of the local scouts group where he developed his love for nature and the outdoors.

   His father Jim was an upholsterer that regularly travelled the country making and installing upholstery in Pubs and Hotels. This placed Owen in an environment where he was surrounded by craftsmen and hospitality venues and the prospect of going to new places and doing new things.

   In 1995, he joined Blackpool & Fylde College where he studied cookery before graduating in 1997.

Early Carreer and the Hilton Group

   While in college he gained work experience at hotels and restaurants in Blackpool as a Commis Chef. In 1997 he was selected by the Hilton Blackpool as a fine dining Apprentice - this was to be his first permanent position within Hilton.

   In the summer of 2000, based on his performance and ambition he was offered a live-in position at the Keswick Lodore Falls Hotel, a classical grand hotel in a spectacular Lake District location then owned by the Hilton Group as a prestige individual property. At the Lodore Falls' Restaurant he aquired skills in classical french cooking and valuable experience in fine dining, banqueting and working part of a large team who lived on the property.

   While living in the Lake District, he was very much into health and fittness. His love of the Outdoors and nature made living there a dream come true and he made lifelong friends.

    At the Lodore Falls, he impressed the Head Chef with his commitment and passion and in September 2002 his determination and hard work paid off when he was offered a position with immediate start in London at the Hilton London Docklands. He eas eager to discover the Capital and city life and expand his training in classical cookery. He worked through the ranks at the Hilton Docklands until Early 2004 when he applied for a position at The Woleseley in Mayfair and was successful. For a young Owen, this was what he had worked for since the age of sixteen when he took his first cooking job in Blackpool. Learning cookery at a top restaurant in London.

The Wolseley

   He joined the newly opened Wolseley Restaurant in Piccadilly as Chef de Partie under Chris Galvin and the supervision of Ed Wilson. His fiery passion earned him a promotion within weeks to Junior Sous Chef. He left The Wolseley in summer 2005 for a short but valuable six months at the Michelin Starred Sketch Restaurant on Conduit Street in Mayfair to train under the direction of Piere Gagnaire whom Owen had only read about in cookery books prior to being offered this coveted and inspiring opportunity.

   In late-2005 he re-joined Chris Galvin at the Galvin Brothers' first solo project, Bistrot De Luxe on Baker Street, where he was Sous-Chef until Summer 2006. He then followed his previous superior and friend Ed Wilson whom he met at The Wolseley a few years earlier, to Sonny’s, a well known and long-established neighbourhood restaurant in the upmarket village of Barnes in West London.

Becoming Head Chef

   After a few months at Sonny’s as Sous Chef he became Head Chef when Ed Wilson departed to join Caves de Pyrrenes.

   In his first position as Head Chef which he held for 4 years, he was solely in charge of the menu at this long-established Restaurant. The responsibility also allowed him to develop a working understanding of the kitchen and business management and accurate costing, this is also where he first gained experience working closely with the owner - Rebecca Mascarenas, a well known, highly demanding Restaurateur who had established Sonny’s some twenty years earlier and is still running it successfully today as well as other successful resturants, all of which are chef-led.

   At Sonny’s was also where Owen began developing his own style under total creative freedoom, putting to use the years of classical french cuisine training he gained prior and his own taste and vision for contemporary interpretations of balanced classic dishes.

   Owen remains in touch with Rebecca Mascarenas – the owner of Sonny’s – she follows Owen's carrer and has remained a mentor and a friend.

The ingredient-led innovation at Brawn

    In May 2010 Owen left Sonny’s to Join Les Caves De Pyrene and Ed Wilson at Terroirs in Covent Garden with the goal to develop and open Brawn later that year with Owen as the Head Chef.

    That summer, during the development of Brawn, Owen travelled with Ed Wilson to several parts of France, Spain and Italy to research and source artisanal produce, find exceptional suppliers and learn about low intervention, natural and organic wines and artisanal winemaking processes.

    Brawn opened in November 2010 to high critical acclaim and is known as the trend setting Restaurant at the core of the East London ingredient-led food revolution. The influence of Brawn on casual fine dining is felt to this day in new restaurant openings across London and beyond that share the specific set of values that Brawn established in London: innovative terrioir-centric European cooking of rustic origin with classical technique and the new contemporary style that Brawn established in London.

   Since 2010, Owen has been taking several trips a year to different parts of Spain, Italy and France to research, discover and enjoy food, produce and wine.

   In May 2015 after 5 Years as Head Chef at Brawn, Owen left the company to take some well deserved time for travelling and explore possiblities for the next big project.

   After travelling for a few months in pursuit of  food in Europe and beyond, Owen returned to London refreshed and in September accepted an offer from D&D London to join the long-established Blueprint Café Restaurant, Tower Bridge as Head Chef with total creative freedoom. Owen accepted the challenge to help redevelop the long-established restaurant after the departure of chef Jeremy Lee. He was excited to follow in the footseteps of a chef he admires.

Spiritland & Canteen Group

    After a year at Blueprint Cafe, having achieved the brief of redeveloping the menus and the establisment of a new culture, in late summer 2016 Owen joined the Canteen Group to develop and open Spiritland in King's Cross.

    Spiritland is a high-end music-led venue featuring one of the best sound systems in the world. A partnership between former BBC Music Producer Paul Noble and Patrick Maloney and Dom Lake of Merchant's Tavern, Spiritland is a unique concept with a deep music policy combined with a refined food and drinks offering.

    As Executive Chef for the group, during his time at Spiritland Owen was also tasked with overseeing the operations at Canteen Spitalfields and in particular Canteen at Royal Festival Hall where he revitalised the offering introducing a chef-led, super-seasonal menu. Canteen at Royal Festival Hall was a prestigious and long established high-volume all-day restaurant, its USP was that pretty much everything was made from scratch in their kitchens using seasonal, low-mileage British produce. Spiritland in King's Cross is a very sucessful venue that has now expanded to the Canteen site at Royal Festival Hall.

Angelina

In 2018, Owen was appointed as Chef Consultant to assist the owner in the opening of this intriguing Italian / Japanese fusion concept. The aim was to combine the ingredient-led approaches of Japanese and Italian cuisine without trying to fuse the styles together. To develop a new approach where dishes from each cusisine are inspired by the values that the cuisines share. Having just returned from an inspiring trip to Japan, Owen's contribution was informed by his experience in handling italian dishes and the hyper-locality and tactility of these two incredible cuisines that are both rich with cultural values many of which they share but which developed through history independently. This helped introduce a very successful new concept to East London that uses a ticketed allocation system for tables and is still a hit today.

Primeur and Westerns Laundry leading to North Street Kitchen

Following the opening at Angelina, Owen was asked by his long-time friend and peer David Gingell during a transitionary period at Primeur and following that, at Westerns Laundry. He then joined the North Street Kitchen pop-up for the 2020 summer season in Fowey which has now converted to a full-time operation and which he visits regularly.

Other interests, goals and ambitions

   To explore food and culture more widely, during 2018, Owen traveled to a different country every month, some trips as long weekends and others for several weeks. Destinations like Thailand, Romania, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands and Japan spurred a renewed interest in traveling. He has been keeping this up in the UK during 2020 and 2021 especially to support British hospitality and to learn more about regenerative farming practices.

Personal Life

   Owen lives in London with his partner, an artist and designer. Aside from travelling, he enjoys socialising and exploring nature, keeping fit and gardening. He has been growing fruit and vegetables in his back garden in West London and in partnership with Chiswick School Allotments in 2019 and 2020, he made sauces, jams and chutneys from the crop which he bottled and sold to raise money for the expansion of the school's community gardening project. He visits his family and friends in the North of England regularly and mentors his nephew Liam who is a chef and has trained in the kitchen at Brawn at the age of 16.

   The human relationship to nature is behind Owen's drive for learning and exploration. A constant source of fascination with creativity and how we interact with the world. He loves people that work with their hands and the products of their effort. How artforms develop in and around the interaction between groups of people and nature.

   He sees our relationship to food as central to our identities and in a world with a deepening identity crisis, he believes that to get closer to nature, our nature, requires the pursuit of learning to work with our hands. A learning culture that values honesty about our interaction with the environment that feeds us. He would like to explore setting up a social enterprise that trains young people who want to become chefs with the values that he acquired in his own experience.