Jake Jones

The Path

In York, food was part of home language, and that early context still reads in Jake Jones’s cooking: direct, practical, and built around flavour before flourish. Two chefs at home shaped his way of seeing the plate, and the result is a style that trusts instinct but stays disciplined. In 2024, Jones was named Michelin Young Chef of the Year, recognition for a body of work defined by restraint as much as technique.

The Work Today

Since 2021, Jake Jones has been Head Chef at Forge at Middleton Lodge Estate in Middleton Tyas, North Yorkshire. The role sits close to the land, and that proximity matters: kitchen and landscape are in regular conversation, and the seasons are part of the daily brief. The work demands steadiness and invention in equal measure, and Jones answers that brief by keeping the food tied to its setting.

In Their Words “The estate’s commitment to sustainability, combined with the chance to work closely with the kitchen garden, has allowed me to create menus that are both innovative and exciting.” “My father and uncle, both chefs, influenced me greatly.” Those two lines point to the structure of the cooking: family influence on one side, sustainable production on the other. Jones’s menus are shaped by the discipline of working within the estate and by a household where chefs were part of the furniture, not an abstract idea. The result is a style that looks backward without becoming fixed.

Acclaim

Michelin Young Chef of the Year is the clearest mark on Jones’s record so far. For a chef from York now leading the kitchen at Forge, the award lands as confirmation of a method already visible in the food: grounded in home influence, organised around the estate, and executed with control. In 2024, that approach was recognised at the highest level for a young chef.