Nathan Chapman is named head chef at Quality Chop House
Seven years after joining the Farringdon Road kitchen, Chapman takes the title that makes his work there official, as Shaun Searley exits after 13 years.
Nathan Chapman is now head chef at The Quality Chop House, the Clerkenwell restaurant on Farringdon Road that has served the same corner since 1869. The title formalises a job he has effectively held for years: Chapman has worked in the kitchen for seven years and helped shape its food for much of that time.
He succeeds Shaun Searley, who left this summer after 13 years as executive chef. Searley joined from St John Bread & Wine and led the kitchen when the restaurant reopened in 2012, building the reputation that put it 85th on Restaurant magazine's list of the UK's top 100 places to eat. He is leaving to open a restaurant of his own; no further details of that project have been made public.
A kitchen built on continuity
No relaunch, no new concept: the same kitchen, under the chef who already knew it.
The restaurant's own account of the handover, posted when Searley's departure was announced in July, read: "As one chapter closes, another begins." It added that Chapman would continue "the values, standards and spirit that have made Quality Chop House what it is today" — a line that doubles as a statement of intent: no relaunch, no new concept, just the same kitchen under a chef who already knew it.
The Farringdon Road site has changed hands only once in its modern history. William Lander and Daniel Morgenthau, who run it through their Woodhead Restaurant Group, acquired it in 2011 and reopened it the following year with Searley at the stove. The marble-topped tables and Victorian booths stayed; the menu, built around British produce and unfussy technique, is what earned the restaurant its current ranking.
What changes, and what doesn't
For now, little is expected to change on the plate. Chapman takes over a menu he helped write, in a dining room he has cooked for since before most current staff joined. The test will come over the next year, as a kitchen used to one voice at the top adjusts to another — even one it already knows well.
London's chef boards have moved fast this autumn, including Angel Zapata Martin's move to Brindisa Tapas. Quality Chop House's succession is quieter than most: no new ownership, no new address, just a cook who waited seven years for the job to catch up with the work.
