2 Michelin Star Chefs: Jeremy Chan, chef and co-founder, Ikoyi

Jeremy Chan is chef and co-founder at Two Michelin-starred Ikoyi in St James’ Market, London.

Jeremy was born in the northwest of England but spent his childhood travelling throughout Europe, the United States and Hong Kong. As a teenager, he taught himself to speak six languages fluently.

Biography

He studied philosophy and theory of languages at Princeton University, where he added Farsi to his collection of languages.  

He then started a graduate job at a renewable energy investment company, but in 2011, he decided against pursuing a career in finance in favour of professional cookery.

"When I’m interested in something, I want to know everything about it,’ he explained, "I was interested in languages in my teenage years, but that flipped onto cooking later on."

Fascinated, Chan immersed himself in the culture and tastes of a new world of flavour but approached the ingredients with a considered open mind and little initial aesthetic agenda. Using Iré for feedback, he began combining his culinary skills and ideas with British ingredients.

As this process developed, so did his innate creativity, and he became less bound by geography. A series of new dishes with unique international flavour profiles emerged, driven solely by his search for ‘deliciousness’, and the concept of Ikoyi was born.

Working directly with select British farmers, fishermen and producers, the kitchen is driven by a totally objective, creative reaction to micro-seasonality and often overlooked ingredients in terms of context and culture.

A pure, personal expression through Jeremy’s analytical lens, dishes harness flavour highs while respecting the nature of each ingredient. The result are menus that surprise the senses with a balance of heat and umami, with dishes imagined in the first instance artistically for visual impact and only then are recipes created.

Ikoyi

In May 2015, Jeremy and his best friend and business partner Iré Hassan-Odukale decided that they wanted to open a restaurant together. The pair were looking to combine both of their backgrounds and create something unique and contemporary, but they were concerned about the situation of the restaurant scene at the time. 

Jeremy's menu at Ikoyi combines heat and umami, and features exciting ingredients such as grains of selim (a musky flavoured seed originating from Africa) and wild black tiger prawns, creating a cuisine that is completely unique.

Example dishes include Pork Jowl & Agege and Smoked Jollof Rice. The tasting menu for dinner is priced at £60 per person. There is a pre-theatre set menu available between 5:30 and 6:30pm, priced at £35 per person. 

Ikoyi received its first Michelin star in 2018. At the time, inspectors said: “The somewhat colourless development that is St James's Market is the unlikely setting for one of the most innovative and original restaurants to open in the capital in recent times. The two owners, friends since childhood, have put together a kitchen that uses home-grown ingredients enlivened with flavours from West Africa.” 

The restaurant has continued to grow and developed, gaining its second Michelin star in the Michelin Guide for Great Britain and Ireland 2022.

Tasting menu

It is surprising to learn that the same year as they received their first Michelin star, 2018, Ikoyi was on the edge of closure. Jeremy and Iré decided that if they were going to fail, they were going down in a blaze of glory, so they moved away from the a la carte menu and switched to a tasting menu format - which, as they saw it, meant that they could give customers a more curated experience.

This not only brought Ikoyi back from the brink, but led to it being awarded a Michelin star in the Michelin Guide for Great Britain and Ireland 2020, with the second following just two years later.

Videos with Jeremy Chan