The chefs’ tables: home kitchen ideas for lockdown living from five top London cooks and restaurateurs

Stuck in a rut cooking every meal at home (who isn't?) reorganise your kitchen with guidance from some of our favourite London chefs.

‘I’m really missing our wood-burning oven’

Lucy Carr-Ellison, Wild By Tart

I live in a very small flat near Marylebone with a tiny kitchen. I’ve had to be really tidy compared with how I sprawl over our kitchen at Wild By Tart. 

I got married in lockdown; we had a very small, very sweet wedding and my husband’s having to put up with my recipe testing at home. The kitchen is in our living space as well so we did it up about three years ago. Before that it was from where Jemima and I used to do all our catering when we started Tart.  

It’s been really nice having time to think about what we’re making and getting excited about beautiful produce, but cooking at home has made me appreciate how spoiled we are with all our machines at Wild By Tart. We can just whizz up fresh pasta in the Kitchen Aid; I don’t have space for one in my flat.

I’m really missing our wood-burning oven although there’s a great little pizza oven by Sage that can sit on the countertop. It’s not wood-fired but it does get really hot.

I’ve been slow-cooking in cast iron casserole dishes, which is fantastic – I love a slow-cooked bean stew – and I’ve been getting back into the habit of making things like granola every week, chicken stock to make Pho and planting herbs.

I got a water carbonator from Aarke for Christmas. I live on sparkling water and can’t believe how many plastic bottles I used to get through.  

•Wild By Tart offers Valentines hampers from £95 (wildbytart.com)

‘Food tastes better if you can see the pots it was cooked in’

Z He, Bun House and Wun’s Tea Room

I live in Spitalfields in one of the oldest houses in London. The first time I came to this street I decided I had to live here one day and I’ve been in this house for five years now, with my husband and my daughter, who’s nearly two.

I’ve been spending a lot of time just cooking with my husband and baby and making the most of all the great groceries that usually are delivered to restaurants only. I discovered Woodland Farm eggs – they’re so nice we use them in all our restaurants now.  

My kitchen is not pristinely organised but I have my way and I understand where things are. I don’t like hiding things away, which is probably the reason it never looks very clean.

I love to see everything so all the pots and pans are hanging on the walls or on the counter, all my spices are out, some are nicely canned some are in the original packet but I need to see them. It’s functional as well as aesthetic; food just tastes better if you can see the cooking pots.

I changed a lot of my deeper cupboards to shallow ones because if something’s at the back of a cupboard I’ll never use it – I realised I had a hand mixer that I hadn’t used in years because it was laid down so I couldn’t see it. I’m a very short person, too, so nothing’s more than two rows deep now. My wardrobe is the same.

Usually I do recipe testing with other chefs in the restaurant kitchens but in lockdown I’ve been doing it at home, so I’ve had to bring home some of our professional equipment like the bigger-sized steamers.

We use the kitchen quite a lot as a family, too – we usually eat breakfast at the kitchen island. It used to be my dining table and it’s over 2m long, it’s a really solid piece of oak that I built storage on the bottom of.

My baby loves cooking. When I’m busy on the stove she’ll be right next to me on her little ladder; she loves putting the spices in the pot or I’ll put the scraps in her little pan and she’ll cook next to me.

I could definitely do better with baby-proofing although we’re always there when she’s in the kitchen. We do hang our knives above the fireplace so she’ll never be able to reach them.

Wun’s X Bun House offers a Valentine’s sweet fondue kit and steam at home bun packs from £9.90 (wunstearoomnationwide.slerp.com)

‘There’s beauty in functionality’

Max Venning, Three Sheets, Top Cuvée and Shop Cuvée

I live with my partner in Dalston. The kitchen is fairly small and opens out on to the living room but I enjoy cooking with my hands so we don’t have that many gadgets. I’ve got a mixing bowl, a good quality Japanese knife and a big chopping board and that’s me.

I even keep my toaster in a cupboard, there’s not a lot of surface area so I just put it away. Now that it’s away I don’t use it I just fry toast in a frying pan or put it under the grill.

We don’t have a kettle either, we have a Moccamaster for coffee and it boils water instantly so we use that.

I don’t follow recipes, I’ll read a few different ones and make it up as I go because in the rest of my life we follow a spreadsheet and it’s exactly the same every time so I don’t want to do that at home. I like to be a bit freer.  

I do keep all my ingredients quite organised; once you’ve worked in kitchens it’s difficult not to.

It’s a bit restaurant nerdy but I won’t keep stuff in the packet, it’ll go straight in ice cream tubs that we order through the restaurant with labels on saying what’s inside.

Functionality for me is the simplest way of doing something and there’s beauty in that. If you look at the top kitchens in the world now there’s just steel counters and you set up a station when you need it rather than having everything too heavily integrated and inflexible. That’s what I look for at home as well.  

We always have a good selection of wines and I’ll make sure I’ve got one of our bottled cocktails in the freezer ready to go and some good quality ice – the stuff from the corner shop melts really quickly and then your drink’s watered down and you can’t take your time over it.  

Like everyone, we’re really missing restaurants and bars. We’re not trying to recreate that at home but we try not to just sit on the sofa to eat. We’ve got some stuff from MK Studios in Copenhagen and my girlfriend makes all our table linen. We also have a good stock of nice glassware that we’re lucky to get cheaply through the bar – when you compare the prices you wince at the margins.

Natural wine delivery subscription, £55/month; Valentine’s Day meal kit including three-course dinner for two, a bottle of wine and an Earl of East candle, from £99 (shopcuvee.com)

‘I like cooking over fire’

Will Bowlby, Kricket

I live in Oval. I’ve got a pretty decent-sized kitchen with lots of paintings on the wall; my dad’s an art dealer so I steal stuff from him when I go home.

There’s a terrace outside where we’ve got a Big Green Egg, a Japanese grill, a barbecue and a fire pit – I like cooking over fire.  

When I’m working in the restaurants I don’t eat terribly well or consistently so I’ve been cooking at home a lot more than usual during lockdown.

I’m a bit of a clean freak so a lot of stuff is stored away and we’ve added storage but our cupboards are pretty rammed at the moment so I’m trying to find a way to organise that better. I’ve just ordered about 40 jars so I can get everything out of packets. If lockdown goes on until March it’s likely I’ll label it all, too.

I’ve got a whole cupboard full of Indian spices and I look down on to it so I can see where everything is from above.

It doesn’t sound that cool but I’m good at fridge management and rotate things a lot to avoid them rotting at the back. I think it’s a product of what I do at work: stock management.  

We’ve bought quite a few different things to play around with. I got a taco press – we’ve been doing a lot of tacos, a lot of home-made breads – and new cast iron skillets for rotis and chapattis and things.

Our kitchen is bulging with ingredients and weird things to cook with. I’ve got two truffle shavers but that’s accidental – it’s not like we eat truffles the whole time, unfortunately.  

I’ve been trying to cut down on my meat so I’ve been cooking a lot of grilled mushrooms with miso and buying vegetables at the market in Oval every Saturday.  

Kricket is offering hot delivery to parts of London and a DIY curry box through Restaurant Kits (kricket.co.uk/delivery)

‘I’ve reorganised my kitchen a few times during lockdown’

Bettina Campolucci Bordi of @bettinas_kitchen

I’ve got a small spice shelf next to my cooker where I have oils, vinegars, soy sauces, sriracha, sambals and spices that I use most often. I bought some new step shelving to go in my cupboards and some battery-operated lights that turn on when I open the door so now I can see everything I’ve got in the cupboard. 

I love a glass jar, and I love a label. Weck jars come in lots of different sizes and they stack really well, and I’ve got a Dymo label-maker. I also got some bamboo spice shelves that are really good to see what I’ve got in my cupboard. We’ve been using all those nice things that you save for a rainy day and then forget about.

We got an extra fridge for lockdown because I do so much recipe testing for my cookbooks. Now we’ve got a family fridge where everybody knows where everything is and I’ve got a work fridge in our living room – it means we don’t have to put together a puzzle every day.  

I’ve also enjoyed all the new subscription boxes: my favourites are Koppert Cress, Natoora, Ashdown Organics, which does biodynamic produce, and Boxxfresh, which uses no single-use plastic whatsoever. 

We really try to separate our weekends from the weekdays. We’ll make the table nice, do a pre-dinner cocktail. My daughter loves to plan a full restaurant menu and then she’ll be the waitress and let my husband and I have a date. She’ll take orders and we’ll price everything so she can practise her maths.  

Bettina Campolucci Bordi is author of Happy Food and 7 Day Vegan Challenge