People on the move: July 2017

Pip Lacey has announced she will step down from her role as head chef at Murano this summer to focus on developing her own restaurant. The chef, who joined the brigade at the Michelin-starred kitchen in 2011, will continue to cook part-time for the group while working on her own standalone concept. She will be replaced by Oscar Holgado, another Murano alumnus who has more recently worked as head chef at Pitt Cue in the city.

Former Great British Menu chef Andrew Birch will join Lainston House hotel as executive chef this August. Birch will oversee the food offering at the five-star Winchester hotel, including the three-AA-rosette The Avenue restaurant. He joins from a head chef role at Fishmore Hall in Ludlow, and has previously cooked at the Michelin-starred Montagu Arms in the New Forest.

Tim Allen is to leave his role as executive chef at the Wild Rabbit in August after winning the pub a star in the 2017 Michelin Guide. The chef joined the pub in 2015 from a role at D&D London’s Launceston Place and wrote on Twitter that he was ‘immensely proud’ of the Wild Rabbit team’s achievements over the past two years. He will leave the pub at the end of August to pursue his own venture, though his successor is yet to be announced.

Paul Evans has joined the three-AA-rosette Mallory Court Country House Hotel and Spa in Warwickshire as head chef. It follows the departure of Paul Foster from the role last year after he left to crowdfund his first restaurant Salt. Evans, who has cooked at L’Enclume and The Waterside Inn,  says he hopes to ‘make his mark’ at the restaurant, which held a Michelin star for over a decade under former head chef Simon Haigh, but lost the award in the 2014 Guide.

Fei Wang has joined Hutong, the northern Chinese restaurant on Level 33 of The Shard, as its new head chef. The Chinese-born chef started his career at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine and his CV includes six years at Hong Yun restaurant in China. He has created a number of new dishes for the menu including roasted baby pidgeon, which diners will be able to marinate themselves in a traditional Lau Zi Hao five spice mix.

South African chef Conor Toomey has been appointed head chef at The Isle of Eriska, the five-star hotel located on a private island off Scotland’s west coast. Toomey joins the site from Amberley Castle in West Sussex, where he was head chef, and his CV includes a stint under Michael Wignall at the then two-star The Latymer Restaurant at Surrey hotel Pennyhill Park. In his new role the chef will creating a menu using produce foraged from the island and grown in the restaurant’s kitchen gardens.