Ashley Palmer Watts

The Path

Kitchen discipline often starts before station work, and the route here did. Ashley Palmer Watts trained at LeBlanq before entering professional kitchens as a pot washer at Le Petit Canard. That kind of work teaches timing, repetition, heat, and the physical order behind service before it teaches authorship. Progression inside a research-minded kitchen moved from kitchen worker to Head Chef at The Fat Duck. In that setting, familiar forms could be questioned and rebuilt through close observation and rigorous experimentation. The later role of Executive Chef at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal in Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London (from 2011), and then Culinary Director at The Fat Duck Group, widened the work from execution under service pressure to the shaping of a broader culinary identity. The present set of ventures extends the same craft logic across categories. Ashley Palmer Watts is co-founder of Artisan Coffee Co, co-founder of The Devonshire (since 2023), and co-founder of Forgotten. The movement is from kitchen technique into coffee, spirits, and the full conditions of a London dining room.

The Work Today

The Devonshire in London, United Kingdom, is built around a direct service brief: food, location, service, and narrative have to align in practice, not just in intention. As Ashley Palmer Watts has described it: "Apart from wanting to serve great food in a great location with great service, and trying to get that mixture exactly right every time, our approach is to create a story." That approach treats the room, the plate, the service rhythm, and the memory of the meal as connected materials. At The Devonshire, comfort and appetite are not enough on their own; they have to be tuned with the same care as the cooking. The recognizable form reconsidered through technique remains part of the work: a dish may first read as familiar, then disclose the method behind it. Specialty coffee sits inside the same vocabulary through Artisan Coffee Co, co-founded by Ashley Palmer Watts. The role places coffee alongside cooking as a material governed by process, presentation, and repeatability. Forgotten, another co-founder role, sits with his stated specialty in sustainable spirits, extending the craft concern from what is plated to what is poured. He also serves as Culinary Director at LeBlanq, carrying the work beyond one kitchen into food-led experiences. British nationality and the link to Maiden Newton, Dorset, sit in the background of a career defined by movement from kitchen labour to dishes recognized beyond their dining rooms. The through-line is controlled transformation: liver parfait presented as citrus, tipsy cake carrying its own reputation, coffee treated as specialty craft, and spirits considered through sustainability.

Signature

Meat Fruit and tipsy cake are the named signatures here. In Meat Fruit, chicken liver parfait is shaped into the bright illusion of a mandarin, making the cut into the dish part of the reveal. Tipsy cake works in a different register: warm, generous, and reputation-bearing, with its effect carried by comfort and careful making rather than disguise.

In Their Words “The British history of food — looking back to go forward is key to our inspirational process. It’s not a re-creation; it is using an initial idea, like a singer/songwriter.” “Apart from wanting to serve great food in a great location with great service, and trying to get that mixture exactly right every time, our approach is to create a story.”

Acclaim

Recognition in this record includes Third Michelin star for The Fat Duck and Two Michelin stars for Dinner by Heston Blumenthal. The awards mark kitchens and periods in which Ashley Palmer Watts’s work was tied to disciplined execution, historical reference, and the use of technique to make an idea legible on the plate.