Tom Clements

The Path

Kitchens have marked Tom Clements’s route by progression, not spectacle. He began at Bocca Di Lupo as sous chef, where the pressures of line work and service would have sharpened pace, precision, and consistency. He then moved into head chef roles at Parson’s and Stockwell Continental, each step adding responsibility and extending the same steady climb. Since 2022, he has been head chef of Plaquemine Lock, where that experience now reads through a clearer, more defined cooking style.

The Work Today

At Plaquemine Lock, the cooking is anchored in Cajun and Creole traditions and in the relationship between cities and water. Clements treats that connection as practical as well as cultural: in his view, waterways are part of how a city feeds, gathers, and remembers. His own words make the point plainly: "Most people don’t think of London as a city connected to water, however it’s something that should be celebrated, just like in New Orleans, and Cajun and Creole cuisine does this brilliantly." The result is a kitchen language shaped by place, with New Orleans as its reference point and London as its counterpoint.

Signature

Tom's signature dishes include shrimp and andouille gumbo, soft shell crab, sweet beignets, Cajun cracklins, and sugar beignet bacon sandwiches. Read together, they show a kitchen working across savory and sweet registers, with Cajun and Creole references kept direct rather than decorative. The range suggests an attention to contrast: broth and shellfish, crisp and tender textures, and finishing notes that give the food its shape.

In Their Words “Most people don’t think of London as a city connected to water, however it’s something that should be celebrated, just like in New Orleans, and Cajun and Creole cuisine does this brilliantly.” “I love the connection New Orleans has to the swamp it was built on, something that London has lost.”