Luke French, Chef at Joro Restaurant - Best British Chef

Since the opening of corrugated iron doors in 2016, chef director Luke French and his wife Stacey have put Sheffield on the culinary map, and have since grown into a mini empire with several establishments in Sheffield and Liverpool.

 

Growing up in Cambridgeshire, Luke's path into the industry was familiar. Unaccustomed to the academic nature of the school, a job as a dishwasher at the age of fourteen at a local restaurant led to a catering NVQ after his GCSE. After moving to Cambridge at the age of eighteen, he landed a cooking job at the university as part of a large kitchen team that cooked for thousands of students every day.

 

Luke goes to appear in The Fat Duck, wanting to experience a different, top-level gastronomic experience. The stage turns into a longer stay, during which Luke becomes fascinated by how experimental and innovative the cuisine is. However, his true enlightenment came when he went to tour Asia. "I absolutely fell in love with everything I saw there," he explained. “I've never eaten at any high-end restaurant, but it's street food that interests me the most. I would help out for a day chopping vegetables for the stall owner and finding all the different dishes in all the places I visited had a huge impact on what I do today.

 

Upon his return to England, Luke spent some time working in hotels in and around Cambridge, before joining Sheffield to start a chef de partie job at The Milestone, the city's highly regarded gastropub. Over the next five years, he worked as a head chef and met Stacey and later helped expand the Milestone Group portfolio of other restaurants in an executive chef role.

French chef Luke

Eventually, over time Luke felt the urge to open his own place. After he and Stacey cooked a private dinner for a local architect, he approached them with the opportunity to open in Krynkl, a four-story building made of shipping containers to showcase small startups and businesses in the city's Kelham Island district. With the blessing and financial support of Matt Bigland and Nina Patel-Bigland (owners of The Milestone Group), Luke and Stacey set to work to prepare what would become Joro for the public.

'We did pop-ups around town for about a year before we opened up, tested the waters and found our feet,' says Luke. “We will talk to suppliers, go foraging and try different things. We were very fortunate to be involved with the site at Krynkl from the very beginning, to the design and even the manufacture of the furniture. However, when we first opened it, it was difficult, especially the first six months. Sometimes we don't have one order for a service and many people don't understand what we are trying to do. It's a quirky little place indeed – after all, we were in a shipping container in Sheffield's old red light district – but it wasn't until we started getting a bit of national press that things started to escalate.'

The national press was starting to see people travel to Joro and Luke and Stacey were starting to get a name for themselves. They offer something Sheffield has never had before – innovative and inventive cuisine that draws on influences from the Nordic and Asian food movements. 'Looking back, when we first opened it I was still trying to find my style,' said Luke. 'Michelin came in and branded us with the 'New Nordic' tag, which was not quite what we were aiming for, but my presentation and approach to clean and pure flavors definitely brings to mind that. There's always been Asian influences in my cooking, but I think they've really popped up lately.'

That Asian influence is aided in a big way by one of Luke's suppliers – Stuart Turner of Sushi Sushi. ‘When Stu came to Joro to sample the products he had to offer, I suddenly had access to all the amazing ingredients I first tasted during my travels around Asia. At first I just loved the taste and tried to use it as much as possible, but since then I've been educating myself about its origins and how it's used, which led us to make our own fermenters like soy sauce. , garum and koji. However, all of our fresh produce – except for a thing or two – is British made. We get our mussels from Scotland, our trout from Hampshire and we work the local beef into Sheffield.’

Joro is now designated as one of the must-visit restaurants in Yorkshire, continuing to offer adventurous small plates that are pure Luke's signature distillery. While it remains the headquarters of everything Luke and Stacey do, other projects have emerged recently, including the House of Joro (a four-bedroom Sheffield boutique hotel and a ten-seat chef's table), Konjo (a fast food inspired East Asia). offers with sites in Sheffield and Liverpool) and Nama, a sushi counter in Liverpool serving responsibly sourced sashimi. Spread over two cities, both are home to an exciting new food scene.
 

char siu pork neck

Cooking time is about 2 hours and 30 minutes, plus an overnight pickling time and extra time to dry the pork by master chef French Chef Luke. This fantastic Chinese-inspired pork char siu recipe is perfectly preserved and full of smoky flavour. The recipe makes more medicine than needed but the mixture can be stored indefinitely in an airtight container and used on a variety of meats or even salmon.

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