Chefs with style: the secret ingredient

Once, the world of cheffing was covert. The eating public was widely unconcerned with what went on in the hot, shouty kitchens at the back of the dining room, and more interested in simply eating good food, rather than understanding how it was made, or by whom. That all changed in the early-2000s with the arrival of Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White, who established the archetype of the ruthless, mercurial, rock-star chef. Interest in food culture has waxed and waned in the years since, but recently, cooking and eating has become cool like never before, and it’s largely down to a cohort of social media ‘creators’ that have made food a matter of style.

‘There is a cultural caché to knowing a bit about food, or being able to make good food,’ says cook and supper club host Joseph Denison Carey. ‘It’s definitely a string to the bow.’ Carey typifies the modern archetype of the food guy. Low-key, softly spoken, inclusive and, crucially, well-dressed. His 25k-follower Instagram feed features videos of him at home, baking focaccia in his chic, ‘cottagecore’ kitchen (as he describes it), or at his roving supper club, Bread+Butter, serving up in a crisp Oxford button-down.

‘The perception of chefs was this high-intensity, haute cuisine, shouty macho thing,’ says Denison Carey, ‘and I think people got really tired of that image.’ No clearer is this shift than in the recent release of Tony, an A24 biopic of the late, almost-mythic cook, pop philosopher and deity of the menswear/food nexus, Anthony Bourdain.

The idea of being a cook has become aspirational, and knowing how to make the perfect three-egg omelette or navigate a small-plates menu is equivalent to having good taste in music or wearing the right clothes. And this cohort – which includes Pierce Abernathy, Jesse Jenkins, Finn Tonry and Jordon Ezra King – recognises that sartorial style is newly synonymous with good eating.

‘What I do is increasingly lifestyle-leaning,’ explains Ben Lippett, a cook and author with 1.3 million followers on Instagram. ‘[Style is] very important. If you’re standing in front of a camera four times a week, you want to feel and look good.’

Lippett’s dress sense is ‘functional but considered’, he says, and he leans toward workwear and Americana from brands such as Toast and Brut – a Paris label with a cult following. His style is like a simple bowl of pasta, he adds wryly. ‘No foams, or weird stuff that doesn’t need to be there.’

As the scene has grown, Lippett has seen the fashion industry take an interest in stylish guys that cook food. ‘I see more of my friends doing dinners with fashion brands,’ he says, and notes that he was invited to attend Paris Fashion Week this year.

But Denison Carey wonders if the profile of the meticulous, volatile chef will rise again. Food culture has become ‘lovely and inviting – a quite casual affair’ he says. ‘But there will be chefs that will go, “Let’s not lose sight of how good things can be when you put in a lot of time and effort” and I wonder if the pendulum will just swing back.’

So keep up the cooking, but maybe don’t throw away the chef whites just yet.