Hamish Brown

The Path

Early kitchen knowledge is often picked up before it is formalized: prep habits, service rhythm, and the daily mechanics of feeding a room. For Hamish Brown, that first proximity came through a beachside restaurant in New Zealand owned by his father. As he puts it, “I was born and grew up in New Zealand where my father owned a restaurant on the beachside and I spent my early days surfing and hanging out in the kitchen.” The point is not romance; it is exposure to a working kitchen before the trade had a name. Restaurant work entered a more structured phase through work experience and restaurant staff at Local restaurant in New Zealand. An apprenticeship at Hotel followed, where repetition, station discipline, and correction turn access into skill. The progression was practical: from being around service to being accountable inside it. Kitchen leadership requires a different set of controls: not only cooking well, but setting standards others can repeat. That responsibility appears in Brown’s record as executive chef at SLH small boutique hotel. It continues in his current role as group executive chef of ROKA Restaurants, where a defined food language has to hold across more than one team and service.

The Work Today

Group executive chef work is a consistency job as much as a creative one. At ROKA Restaurants in London, Hamish Brown’s work sits above a single station or pass, with responsibility for oversight, calibration, and keeping the group’s cooking language clear from plate to plate. The style is stated in direct terms: "The food style at Rocka is most definitely Modern Japanese. The rest we're going to teach.Brown gives the definition himself: “The food style at Rocka is most definitely Modern Japanese. We take traditional Japanese but we're not traditionally prepared.”** The craft distinction is useful: Japanese references remain visible, while preparation and presentation operate in a contemporary restaurant register.

Signature

The named signatures — Purebred Japanese Wagyu tartare, yellowtail sashimi with yuzu-truffle dressing, black cod dumplings, and Black cod marinated in yuzu miso — define the stated Modern Japanese vocabulary through cut quality, richness, acidity, and measured seasoning. In Hamish Brown’s repertoire, black cod is worked in two directions, while yellowtail and Wagyu sit on the colder, more immediate side of the menu. The through-line is control rather than ornament. Texture, temperature, and balance carry the work: sashimi with citrus-truffle dressing, tartare built on Wagyu, dumplings using black cod, and miso-marinated black cod as a separate treatment of the same ingredient.

In Their Words “I was born and grew up in New Zealand where my father owned a restaurant on the beachside and I spent my early days surfing and hanging out in the kitchen.” **“The food style at Rocka is most definitely Modern Japanese. We take traditional Japanese but we're not traditionally prepared.