Alastair Burgess

Service is the first training ground in Alastair Burgess’s record: a fish and chip shop, then bars, then more bars, each room teaching pace, repetition, and how to read a floor. Work in Guildford, Birmingham, and London, from 2002, built that base in the practical register of hospitality, where the lesson is less theory than endurance and timing. New York added another bar culture to that base, before Quo Vadis and a food and beverage manager role at Hotel widened the brief beyond the bar rail.

The career moves through rooms rather than around a single format, and that is the throughline: Burgess accumulating experience inside service, then using it to define his own projects. Cocktail bars and French food became the two poles of that work, and later, the places where he chose to build. Founding Happiness Forgets in 2010, Original Sin, and Petit Pois in 2016 marked the shift from employee to operator. Burgess has put that progression plainly: “I’ve been in the hospitality industry for 22 years, I started when I was 16 in a fish and chip shop, then when I was 18 and failed my NVQ in management studies - much to the disappointment of my mother - I got a job in a bar.” The line is blunt, but the trade logic is clear: longevity in hospitality is often made from repetition, adjustment, and keeping on with the work.

Happiness Forgets in London sits at the center of Alastair Burgess’s current work, reflecting a long interest in cocktail bars shaped by clarity and intent rather than excess. Original Sin extends that same operating logic into another project, and together the two ventures show how Burgess has moved from working the floor to setting the terms of the room.

Cocktail bars and French food are the two strands in Alastair Burgess’s work, and the pairing points to a consistent approach to balance: service that is accessible without being casual, and spaces that are structured without feeling overbuilt. The throughline is control of tone, not display.

No individual awards or credentials are named.