Too many cooks? Why chef collabs are on the rise

Not this Sunday. Head chef Nick Bramham has opened the restaurant as part of a series of collaborations. A few weeks earlier, he cooked with Joké Bakare, the Nigerian-born founder of Michelin-starred Chishuru. Today, Bramham has welcomed Sertaç Dirik, one of Britain’s best young chefs, formerly of modern Turkish restaurant Mangal II in east London. The dishes they’re sending out – lamb sweetbreads with crunchy pickled onions, parsley and flatbread; roast poussin doused in pul biber-infused butter – are proving a hit.

Friends Gina Hopkins and Kat Adams both work in hospitality and are finishing off their poussin. Hopkins is a fan of Mangal II and finds Dirik’s modern take on Turkish food exciting. “The best thing about these events is there’s the buzz of a Saturday night,” she says. She detects both chefs’ cooking in the dishes. “Nick’s faithful to traditional European cuisine, and I can see the two coming together, a bridge between experimental Turkish and that traditional approach.”

On another table, George Isard and Kitty Cotton are equally enthusiastic. Isard has long followed Dirik’s cooking and has always wanted to try it. Cotton attended a similar pop-up with the chef in Bruton, Somerset, and says collaborations are a “great way to try new food in a setting you know and love”.

Collaborations – or collabs – are everywhere. Any day of the week, throughout the country, you might come across a meal created by two or more chefs from different establishments, often dubbed “four hands” dinners. The Parakeet in north London has had semi-regular guest chefs since opening in 2023. In Somerset, Michelin-starred Osip hosted top Japanese chefs from restaurants around the world during the summer. Anna Tobias of Café Deco in London travelled to Cornwall, Cork and Brooklyn to cook with other chefs, while Peckham’s Levan has welcomed several Parisian wine bars.

No two are the same, but there are common categories. Mates joining forces for a fun evening. Like-minded chefs collaborating on a theme, such as sustainability. A chef from a hot restaurant in town for one night only. Michelin-starred collabs. Collabs that combine disparate cuisines or entirely different disciplines (winemakers, DJs and artists), or celebrate milestones. The possibilities are endless.

But they’re not universally popular. One food writer told OFM they were “cynical, box-ticking, PR activation BS. Get back in your own kitchen – they just don’t make any real sense.” Indeed, it may be frustrating to visit a restaurant only to find its chef is busy elsewhere. In some cases, chefs simply cook their own dishes, which doesn’t feel particularly collaborative and could create stylistic clashes between courses.

Collaborations are nothing new. Gelinaz!, a series of events launched by Italian food writer Andrea Petrini, has been running since 2005. After the 2008 financial crash, a surge in empty units and a tough economic climate encouraged chefs to experiment with alternative, informal forms of service, including pop-ups and collaborations. Lyle’s, the influential east London restaurant which closed down this year, hosted roughly 100 chefs in its 11 years, says its founder James Lowe.

But this summer saw a boom in new collabs. Chefs cite myriad reasons. “It’s about bringing different communities together and having fun in the process,” says Ben Allen, head chef at the Parakeet. “Collaborations spark creativity. By blending different culinary perspectives we’re able to create something new, exciting and often unexpected. It keeps things fresh.” Allen cites an evening with Sebby Holmes of Thai restaurant Farang as “challenging us to explore how bold East Asian flavours could complement our fire-based, European-style cooking”.

This year Masaki Sugisaki of Dinings SW3 in southwest London welcomed several chefs for “gill-to-tail” dinners. “I’ve never come away from a collab without learning something super insightful,” says Sugisaki, who sees their growth as a “reflection of diner demands”. Londoners, he says, are constantly on the lookout for unique and creative culinary events. “As a city, we’re a tough crowd.”

On a warm Monday night in July, the French restaurant Camille in Borough Market held a Bastille Day dinner. It was rammed, with crowds spilling into the forecourt. Run by ex-St John chef Elliot Hashtroudi, Camille is, unsurprisingly, offal heavy, and usually focuses on northern French cookery. But that night, alongside Meedu Saad, head chef at Thai restaurant Kiln in Soho, and Rose Gabbertas, a pastry chef who has worked at Lyle’s and St John, Hashtroudi leant into the North African influences in southern French cuisine.

It was a new experience, and not one he intends to repeat often: “But on a nice occasion with purpose, the right person and the right intention, celebrating a region or something that means something to us, it’s definitely something we’ll keep doing. We’ll probably do a night for Beaujolais. It was a good first run.”

Collaborations can be gimmicky. A dinner I attended, cooked by one of Lisbon’s trendiest chefs, Zé Paulo Rocha, in an unremarkable restaurant in the middle of the City of London, felt like two worlds colliding. Although the salt cod salad and blood and rice sausage were perfectly good, the chef’s cooking felt less exciting than when I had tried it at O Velho Eurico, his lively spot in Alfama.

But at Camille the three cooks worked closely together, each adding personal elements to the restaurant’s repertoire. Partly inspired by Saad – who has Egyptian heritage and recently spent time in Provence – one of Camille’s signature dishes, a stuffed duck neck, was tweaked with dried fruits. Gabbertas made a tobacco and coffee granita, riffing on the French love for a coffee and cigarette after a meal.

The financial rewards of collabs are often less significant than the hype around them. Visiting chefs might not be paid, although the host will usually cover travel and accommodation. But the events can generate excitement and some extra marketing opportunities, while attracting a new audience.

The dinners are particularly well attended by those who work in the industry. Chef Dara Klein, who ran a long-term residency at the Compton Arms in Islington and will soon open her own trattoria, is at Camille alongside three other chefs and a sommelier. “Going out to eat food cooked by my peers is equal parts pleasure and research,” she says. “It’s inspiring to see several chefs at the top of their game collaborating to create something for one night only.” She says the dinners are fun and experimental – there are fewer restrictions on food and service, and a “sense of excitement and gentle chaos which appeals to industry staff”. Klein later cooked with Bramham at Quality Wines in August. “It’s a fun way to introduce yourself to a city, collaborating with a well-established institution.”

In Edinburgh, Timberyard hosted a summer solstice dinner featuring a collaboration with Higher Ground, one of Manchester’s top restaurants, plus farms, brewers, winemakers and DJs. Co-owner Jo Radford described it as a “coming together of some of the most exciting, progressive people in their own fields in the UK just now. It was a bit of a dream.”

Much of the produce came from Cinderwood Market Garden, a farm owned by Higher Ground. Fife brewery Futtle provided beers (and music), while Kent winemaker Sophie Evans brought the wine. According to Radford, each has a similar ethos – sustainable, seasonal – and dishes such as roe deer with Cinderwood lettuce and preserved berries were a success. For Timberyard, it was a trial run for the restaurant’s move towards serving only wild meat.

The night took considerable planning. “It was about as different from a normal Timberyard dinner service as could be,” says Radford. “Listening to why these people do what they do and sharing interesting and unique experiences with our guests was inspiring. These events don’t make much money; margins are already tight, and we try to price them more affordably than a regular Timberyard service. But it’s trying to offer something different. It’s not an easy market now. Work has never felt tougher in terms of the daily grind, so it’s really important to have these days in the diary, just to give a little bit of excitement for the team – and for the public.”

Petrini’s current Gelinaz! series pairs chefs with musicians – but he is alert to the downsides of collabs. He says he can see chefs from far-flung places bringing almost ready-made food, each cooking their own dishes to “produce content mostly for Instagram and fulfil a public relations machine. It’s something that most of the time is organised to get media attention. [But] what’s the point unless it’s totally revolutionary?”

For Petrini, a collaboration event may offer access to a far-flung chef’s cooking, but it’s nothing like visiting their own restaurant and eating their food in its rightful place. The counter-argument is that collaborations democratise dining, giving people the opportunity to try a popular chef’s cooking without having to fork out on travel.

Hashtroudi agrees collabs can go wrong, especially when restaurants bring in a big name without a valid reason: “You have to have an overarching purpose, otherwise it’s just another day.” For Saad, “they can be really bad if you’re just trying to showcase your ability or ideas. It should always be with the guest in mind. The fun is to try and give them something better than they would have normally. It should be more special than a restaurant.”

That’s exactly how my lunch at Quality Wines feels. In the open kitchen, Dirik – sporting a black “Ozzy Rules” T-shirt – and Bramham begin the day tentatively, improvising finishing touches to their dishes. But they soon find their groove, as though they’ve cooked together for years. The two became friends eating at each other’s restaurants, and the day’s menu is partly inspired by a joint trip to Istanbul. Bramham says Dirik has “brought his mum’s know-how to particular dishes. The borek, the baklava, the season for the bulgur and the sweetbreads – real insight that you wouldn’t get outside of a Turkish household”.

Most importantly, the event is exciting. Not perfect, but fresh, unpredictable, a bit raucous. Two chefs enjoying each other’s company, riffing off each other and providing a had-to-be-there moment. Expect to see many more in 2026.