Joe Laker

Coming Up

Early work as chef at a Chinese restaurant in Leeds set the terms of the trade: discipline, speed, and learning on the pass. From there, Joe Laker worked through The Black Swan in Oldstead, Roots in York, Anglo in Farringdon, Pollen Street Social in London, and Elystan Street in London. The names matter less as a résumé than as markers of a long apprenticeship across different kitchens, each one adding another layer to his approach. A later move into the role of pizza chef at Water Lane Boathouse shifted the rhythm of the work, before another step on to chef at Fenn in Fulham. Read together, those posts show a career built by accumulation rather than single leaps: one kitchen after another, with the craft tightening as it went. Today, Joe Laker is chef of Counter 71.

Where They Are Now

British food, for Joe Laker, is framed less as an idea than as a working system: what grows here, what is caught here, what is reared here. That perspective puts landscape and season at the center of the kitchen, with produce, catch, and livestock understood as the basis of the culture rather than an abstract label. “I’ve come to the realisation that this is the country I was born in; the food that’s grown here, the fish that’s caught here, the animals that are reared here – that is the culture. That is our heritage.” The position is direct, and it clarifies the direction of his cooking. Instead of leaning on shorthand, Joe Laker points toward the specifics of British ingredients and traditions, treating them as the material reality of the work.

In Their Words “I’ve come to the realisation that this is the country I was born in; the food that’s grown here, the fish that’s caught here, the animals that are reared here – that is the culture. That is our heritage.” “I’ve had so many times when I tell people I’m opening a British restaurant, they think I’m serving roasts, fish and chips. It used to annoy me, now I can’t blame people for thinking like that.”