Greg Clarke

Wiltshire-born Greg Clarke cooks with a fixed set of priorities: flavour first, produce driven, detail obsessed, and fire fuelled. His work reflects fine-dining precision, practical resilience, and the discipline to let the ingredient lead before anything else gets a turn. He began at the lowest rung of the kitchen as a kitchen assistant washing pots at pubs around Manchester, where repetition, pace, and pressure shaped his first experience of the trade. He then moved into training as a chef in training at Gleneagles, shifting from support work into the technical demands of the stove. From there, he worked in kitchens that tightened the frame of his craft, including Martin Wishart's in Edinburgh, Restaurant Tom Aikens in London, and The Ledbury in London. Those rooms asked for consistency, polish, and restraint, and they helped build a foundation based on precision rather than excess. Clarke later took on broader responsibility as development chef at Midsummer House, a role that suggests refinement, testing, and the slow shaping of ideas into dishes with intent. He then moved to head chef at Typing Room, extending that line from execution toward authorship. He later worked as private chef for private clients until 2021 before becoming chef on residency at The Pass at South Lodge Hotel in Sussex in 2021. In 2024, he emerged in a new guise as chef and co-founder at El Bolillo in Hove, keeping the focus on precision and heat while changing the format around it. Across these roles, Clarke has moved between kitchens, cities, and settings without drifting from his core habits. He has described an approach that draws on respect and a background in fine dining rather than imitation. The reference points remain visible, but the food is filtered through his own hand rather than copied outright. That balance of craft and restraint links the Sussex role, the development-chef work, the London kitchens, and the Hove chapter. His signature dishes include tuna tostada with lardo, achiote dressing and finger lime, Graceburn feta churros with jalapeños and chipotle crema, barbacoa short rib beef with Mayan red cocolate and salsa criolla, and tres leches flan with lacto raspberries and herbs. The set shows a kitchen working with contrast: playful, but controlled; layered, but not fussy.