Jorge Paredes leaves Oma to run a burger and Champagne room
The chef who helped Oma win a Michelin star becomes executive chef at Milk Burger, opening on Westbourne Grove on 5 October with bone marrow burgers and Champagne by the glass.
Jorge Paredes, former head chef at the Michelin-starred Oma in Borough Market, becomes executive chef of Milk Burger, a new restaurant opening in Notting Hill on 5 October.
The site on Westbourne Grove previously housed a branch of Gourmet Burger Kitchen. Milk Burger pairs burgers and sandwiches with Champagne, wine and cocktails, a combination the founders are betting will read as a step up from the standard burger-and-beer format rather than a novelty.
During Paredes' time at Oma, the restaurant earned its first Michelin star and was named the guide's Opening of the Year. Moving from a starred kitchen to a burger counter is an unusual step, but it fits a wider pattern of chefs with fine-dining credentials taking senior roles at ambitious casual openings rather than treating the move as a step down.
A burger and Champagne room built around a Michelin-trained kitchen, not a novelty pairing.
The menu is still being finalised, but planned dishes include a bone marrow and truffle burger, a spicy smash burger, and a Cuban sandwich, followed by soft serve or fried cherry pie for dessert. The bone marrow and truffle combination in particular signals a kitchen aiming past the usual smash-burger baseline.
Milk Burger was founded by Alina Kosichkina and Dima Zakhodiakin, hospitality entrepreneurs who built a portfolio of 32 restaurants in Kyiv before relocating to London after the outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2022. The Notting Hill site is their first restaurant in the city, bringing two decades of combined industry experience to a single London address rather than a chain rollout.
A Michelin resume behind the counter
Paredes' appointment continues a run of senior chefs moving into London's burger scene with serious technique behind them, following the model set by Jordan Bailey's two-Michelin-starred Heard, which is opening its own two-storey flagship in Covent Garden this November.
Pairing that kind of kitchen with Champagne rather than craft beer is a deliberate positioning choice. It puts Milk Burger closer to a wine bar with burgers on the menu than a fast-casual chain, at a moment when Champagne producers are themselves adjusting their own rules for 2026.
One site, no chain plans yet
Kosichkina and Zakhodiakin have not announced further UK openings. For now, Milk Burger stands as a single test of whether a Michelin-trained chef and a Champagne list can justify a burger price point above the high street norm, with the answer likely to show up in bookings within its first few months.
