Matt Healy

The Training Thomas Danby College Leeds is the named starting point in Healy’s training, the place where the practical grammar of kitchens entered the story before ownership and chef-patron duties followed. That education sits within the same regional frame as his later work: British cooking, local custom, and the meal structures people return to week after week. That formation matters most in the way his food is framed. Healy’s stated specialty is British cooking, a broad tradition that can be plain only when handled lazily; in his hands, the focus narrows to the fundamentals that decide whether a meal lands. The clearest expression is his Award-winning Sunday lunch. Healy describes the discipline without ornament: "We focus on making the actual meat perfect, coupled with a mega gravy, roasties, Yorkshire puddings and a simple veg offering! Anything more than that is just faff (in my opinion!)." It is a cook’s answer, built on sequence and restraint: meat first, gravy with force, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, vegetables kept simple.

The Lineage The public arc includes ownership of X The Foundry in Leeds in 2018, a key dated point before the current Forde chapter. That role places Healy in the city’s restaurant life not only as a chef but as an owner, responsible for the decisions that turn cooking into a house style and a business. From there, the line branches into Forde Horsforth and Forde Ilkley, both of which he owns. The names carry a Yorkshire map across them: Horsforth, Ilkley, and Leeds as the wider frame. As Chef Patron of Forde in Leeds, Healy stands at the pass with both memory and responsibility behind him. The lineage is not presented through a list of famous masters; it runs through college training, ownership, and the British Sunday meal that so often teaches a cook what people truly measure. Natural wines sit beside roast meat and Yorkshire puddings without forcing a contrast. In Healy’s world, the combination reads as practical rather than theatrical: a chef-owner drawing from British food memory while making room for the way people drink now. The Sunday lunch is the clearest inheritance. It asks for no flourish beyond getting the essential things right, and that is why the formation story feels complete: a cook connected to Horsforth and trained in Leeds, making British cooking speak through the dishes most people think they already know.