The Cumberland appoints two new head chefs in London

The Cumberland has appointed two new head chefs in London, with Stefano Tortelli taking over Gordon Ramsay Hell's Kitchen and Matthew Hurry stepping in as executive head chef across the Marble Arch hotel's food and drink.

Tortelli was most recently brand executive head chef for Bulldozer Group, where he oversaw the launches of Alba in Knightsbridge and La Baia in Paris. He has also worked at Margot, Enoteca Turi, Bocconcino and Gordon Ramsay Restaurants. He replaces Kyle Lewis, who had run Hell's Kitchen since the restaurant's UK debut at the hotel in April and had previously been head chef of the Savoy.

Hurry joins from the Angel Inn and takes charge of the hotel's full food and beverage operation, including Lírica, its Spanish tapas restaurant.

One restaurant barely a year old, one changing hands anyway: British kitchens keep moving.

A debut restaurant's first reshuffle

Hell's Kitchen London opened at the Cumberland in April, the television format's first UK site. A head-chef change within its first year shows how quickly hotel restaurant groups now rotate kitchen leadership, even on a format built around a single famous name.

It comes in the same week as other London chef moves, including Mark Sargeant's return to a Surrey pub kitchen.

Elsewhere in Yorkshire

Further north, Jamie Keeble has left Mýse in Hovingham, where he was head chef from its 2023 opening, to run the Chef's Table at Swinton Estate in Masham. The 12-seat room in the estate's historic Coach House reopens on 1 October under executive head chef Steve Darou, who joined Swinton in June after twelve years at St John in London.

Two hotel appointments in Marble Arch and a Michelin-trained chef swapping a three-year-old dining room for a country estate: the same week's churn across British kitchens, in two very different postcodes. Neither move has been announced as a sign of trouble at either address; both hotels and estates describe the changes as planned promotions rather than departures under pressure, and both new head chefs start service this month.