Long and Messy Business

Rowley Leigh was born in Manchester in 1950 and fell into cooking ‘almost by accident’ in 1977. Working with the Roux brothers at Le Gavroche in 1979, he took over their Le Poulbot restaurant as head chef in 1984 and won The Times' ‘Restaurant of the Year’ award in 1986. He has won three Glenfiddich awards for his work in the Guardian, the Sunday Telegraph and the Financial Times. He left Kensington Place in order to open Le Café Anglais in 2007 and is now a consultant for the Soho House group, overseeing the opening of their Café Monico brasserie in April 2016. He lives in Acton, west London.