The Chester Grosvenor

Standards held at service

Sam Griffiths works the service rhythm as Chef at The Chester Grosvenor in City Centre, Chester, where the pass has been his proving ground across more than one post. His formation here was not a clean arrival from elsewhere, but a climb through the brigade: from 2016–2023, Griffiths moved from Demi Chef de Partie to Executive Sous Chef, learning the house through repetition, pressure, and the small corrections that keep a kitchen straight. By 2025, that path had placed him as Executive Chef at The Chester Grosvenor, with responsibility reaching across the hotel kitchen and The Henry Robertson Dining Room Restaurant. Griffiths describes the part of the work that lifts him most plainly: “Service. Having the team pumped and working together to deliver food at excellent standards.” The line says more about the station than any flourish would. He measures the kitchen by the crew, the pace, and the refusal to let a plate leave as merely acceptable.

A rule against drift

The method Griffiths has made public is less about novelty than control. “I don’t love to follow trends, I think if something is good it will always do well,” he has said, a kitchen rule suited to a hotel with long memory and formal dining in its walls. His signature dish, Hot and Cold Potato, reads in the same register: temperature, restraint, and handling before spectacle. The name gives little away, but it points to a cook interested in decisions that can be felt on the plate rather than announced around it. At The Chester Grosvenor, that discipline sits beside dining rooms with their own weight: Simon Radley at The Chester Grosvenor has held a Michelin star since 1990, while La Brasserie carries 2 AA Rosettes. Griffiths’ own pressure is immediate and daily. He has put it bluntly elsewhere: “That’ll do'' shouldn’t be in a chef’s vocabulary. It’s a slippery slope!”

The house around the pass

The kitchen works inside a house whose materials keep their own discipline. The Chester Grosvenor’s black and white timbered façade dates to 1865, and the building is Grade II listed, a formal frame for a hotel of 80 individually decorated rooms. Inside, the register is not spare: grand staircases, chandeliers, mahogany panelled boardrooms, opulent fabrics, and quiet lounge corners give the floor a sense of ceremony without raising the volume. That matters for the kitchen. Food leaves the pass into rooms where comfort and polish are already expected, so the plate has to carry clarity rather than noise. The Arkle Bar and Lounge, La Brasserie, and the more formal dining room each ask a different tempo from the brigade, but the standard cannot shift with the room.

What holds in the building

Griffiths’ next move is already contained in the work at hand: keeping a large hotel kitchen aligned while service moves through more than one room. The detail to follow is the plate that best states his rule against drift, Hot and Cold Potato.