A New Era: A conversation with Head Chef Robbie Jameson, Bar ALTA
When Robbie Jameson joined ALTA as Head Chef in May, he inherited a Soho restaurant already riding high. The Northern Spanish-inspired restaurant had been named The Knife’s Restaurant of the Year 2025, earned recognition from the Michelin Guide and secured a Best New Opening nomination at the National Restaurant Awards.
Formerly Head Chef at HUMO, Robbie has now brought his own fire-led philosophy to ALTA while spearheading Bar ALTA, a more spontaneous ground-floor concept inspired by the pintxos bars of Northern Spain. Here, he talks to The Knife about relinquishing control over fire, why London diners are returning to simpler cooking, creating a healthier kitchen culture and what he hopes his new chapter at ALTA will become.
Last year, The Knife named ALTA its Restaurant of the Year. Walking into a kitchen that already carried that expectation, did you feel pressure to preserve what people loved, or excitement about putting your own stamp on it?
Any time you take on a new role, there’s pressure. The key thing is how you handle it. Just because something is already great doesn’t mean it can’t improve or become slightly different.
There’s a certain level of expectation at ALTA, from the owners and from the guests who already enjoy the restaurant. I’ve kept a small number of things that I wouldn’t change because I feel they’re part of its identity, but coming in and putting my own stamp on it is definitely part of the experience too.
You came to ALTA from HUMO, another restaurant where cooking over fire is central. What have you consciously brought with you?
I’ve been cooking over open fire for years. It’s primarily what I like to focus on and what I really enjoy doing.
There’s an originality to wood-fire cooking. If you really go back to the beginning, there’s no cooking without fire. It’s as simple as that. There’s something really special about the flavour it creates, and people sometimes forget that the charcoal and the varieties of wood you use have their own character too. For me, fire almost becomes another ingredient in the recipe.
HUMO had that Japanese influence, which I’d also been working with for quite a long time. When I came to ALTA, there's obviously more of a Spanish focus. But I’ve recently taken on the Executive Chef position and now oversee MOI as well, so I still get to explore that Japanese side – just in a different place.
Bar ALTA feels quite different from the restaurant upstairs. How do you see the relationship between the two?
I see them as two different dining experiences and two different atmospheres, but ultimately two variations of the same cuisine.
Bar ALTA is about faster-paced dining, small plates and lots of variety. The main thing I wanted to focus on was ingredient quality and treating things as simply as possible. We don’t need to overcomplicate everything. It’s about finding the best produce we can and allowing it to speak for itself.
How do you recreate the energy of a pintxos bar in San Sebastián in the middle of Soho without it becoming theatrical?
There’s a level of theatre in most restaurants, particularly in London because it’s such a competitive city. In central London especially, there are so many restaurants competing for people’s attention.
For me, authenticity comes back to ingredients. Find the best halibut you can, the best beef you can, then treat it simply. When you think about tapas and pintxos, the key is often simple ingredients treated in a simple way.
It’s also about making sure guests don’t feel pressured to act or dress in a certain way. In so many tapas and pintxos bars in Spain, you’re shoulder to shoulder with people. There isn’t that pressure, you can just relax.
Has cooking over fire changed the way you think about control?
One hundred per cent. I spent several years in Australia, and that’s where I really focused on wood-fire cooking. They have a huge barbecue culture, but the style is quite different. Texas barbecue is long, low and slow with lots of smoke. Japanese cooking can involve very intense charcoal heat with dressings and glazes. In Australia, there’s a lot of seafood and very simple treatment, using extreme temperatures and cooking close to the fire.
One of the biggest things I learnt is that fire can actually be delicate if you’re attentive enough. I always tell people that when you cook with fire, you need to forget this illusion that you’re in control, because you’re not. You can manipulate it. You can shape it, control the oxygen, change the temperature or use different woods. You can get close to control. But at the end of the day, it’s still fire.
Do you think restaurants have become too focused on spectacle?
There will always be restaurants that are theatrical or completely over the top, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Some people want that experience.
I’ve been cooking for 17 years now, and you see things move in cycles. It happens in fashion, music and food. What was fashionable 10 years ago disappears, while something from 25 or 30 years ago suddenly comes back.
When molecular gastronomy really exploded, chefs were doing these incredibly extreme things and it was brilliant. It gave people inspiration and created a huge amount of excitement around restaurants.
But what I notice now is that many of the busiest restaurants have returned to quite humble styles of cooking. You see chefs cooking from nostalgia, using relatively simple techniques and putting flavour first.
The industry should constantly change. We shouldn’t become set in our ways. Every time a new style arrives, it creates excitement and inspires the next generation of chefs.
The Bar ALTA menu can move from something as simple as Padrón peppers to Wagyu with chilli and Espelette pepper. Is that contrast important to you?
Definitely. When I joined, I was very clear with the owners: I’m not Spanish. I’ve travelled around Spain, eaten plenty of tapas and pintxos and spent time around Spanish chefs, and I love the culture, but I still wanted to put my own spin on things.
There are dishes where simplicity is everything. Padrón peppers are something you’ll find everywhere in Spain, and we sell loads of them. They’re fried peppers – simplicity at its best. But this is also London, and some people want something more luxurious. So you can take something like A4 or A5 Wagyu and pair it with Spanish chillies, Espelette pepper and lime.
Not everybody wants the simplest dish all the time. Sometimes people want premium ingredients, but they still want to eat them in a humble, relaxed restaurant.
At a time when restaurants increasingly depend on bookings, deposits and careful planning, Bar ALTA embraces walk-ins and spontaneity. Why was that important?
Bookings are brilliant because they allow you to run a consistent, successful business. You can control labour, orders, spend per head – all those things.
But look at where ALTA is. Kingly Court and Carnaby are incredibly busy. Tens of thousands of people are walking through, shopping, sightseeing or looking for somewhere to eat. We wanted to keep that more reservation-led restaurant experience upstairs because that is what ALTA was built on, and people love it. But downstairs we wanted something more laid-back that also works for the person simply walking past. People might come in saying they only want a drink. Then they order some olives, then another small plate, and suddenly they’ve been sitting there for two hours and eaten eight or nine dishes. That’s a beautiful way to eat.
Soho can also be quite stressful because it’s so busy. There’s something nice about walking through a doorway into Kingly Court, sitting down, having a drink and a couple of plates and escaping that intensity for a moment.
We have enough space that we don’t need to rush people back out of the door either. That freedom was really important to us.
If there were one dish on the menu that tells diners something about Robbie Jameson as a chef, what would it be?
There are a few things I always tell people they need to try. The crispy squid is one. If I’m anywhere in Spain and there’s crispy squid on the menu, I’m ordering it. I went to Málaga with some friends last year and we visited about nine places in one day. I think we ate crispy squid in every single one.
But the Wagyu skewer probably represents me best. It’s bold, spicy, fatty and served in the bone. It isn’t subtle, and I’ve never considered myself a subtle chef. It shows the flavours and intensity I like, it uses a premium ingredient, and there’s even a slight Japanese influence from my past. It probably brings together my style better than anything else on the menu.
The Basque Country blurs the line between eating and socialising particularly well. Is recreating that culture harder than recreating the food?
I believe very strongly that culture is built around food, music and family. Some of the best ways of sharing culture happen around a dinner table, and certain countries do that incredibly well. Spain is one of them. Sitting down with the people you love, enjoying food and music together – even when the food itself is incredibly simple – means something.
At ALTA we’ve introduced counter dining where people can sit beside the chefs and talk to us about food, experiences and what certain dishes mean. Outside, we replaced smaller separate tables with longer communal tables. There are no dividers. People sit beside one another. And you genuinely see conversations starting. Someone notices what the people beside them have ordered and asks about it. Groups start sharing. That decision to remove some of those barriers between people is probably one of the best things we’ve done.
What sort of kitchen do you want people to say Robbie Jameson runs?
My kitchen is very much built around trust and relationships. When I joined ALTA there was naturally some turnover. That happens when a new chef comes in because people have loyalties to the previous team. But I’ve also been fortunate enough to bring in people I’ve worked with for years.
My senior sous chef Oliver Staines has been with me for seven and a half years. We’ve done almost every job together. There are people like Luigi, James, Nick and Celine who have worked with me across different restaurants. We run a tight ship because there’s trust there.
But something else that matters hugely to me is working hours. The industry has a bad reputation for people working far too much. I’ve done it myself. I spent years working 65, 70, sometimes even 80 hours a week, sometimes for months without more than one day off at a time. In one sense, those experiences pushed me and helped make me the chef I am. But there were hard times too. I struggled with alcohol, struggled with sleep and missed important things with my family. It put a strain on my health and relationships.
I don't want my team to experience the same thing. I make sure people work their contracted hours. They get two days off together. They can take their holidays. I want everybody to have a life outside the restaurant. And you can see the difference in the kitchen. People are refreshed. They enjoy coming to work. We're an open kitchen, so the atmosphere we create is exactly what the guest feels on the other side of the counter. We're loud, we're busy, we're cooking over fire – there is theatre to it. But underneath all of that has to be support and teamwork. When people enjoy their job, they work harder, they work better and they take more pride in what they're doing. I was pushed to my limits by kitchens earlier in my career, and those chefs helped make me who I am. I wouldn't change the past. But if I can create a different future for the chefs I'm now responsible for, then I will.
Finally, with Michelin recognition, national awards and now Bar ALTA, what would make you feel you've taken the restaurant somewhere it couldn't have reached without you?
There are lots of talented chefs in London who could create a great tapas or pintxos-style restaurant, so I'm not going to say I'm the only person who could have done that. What I'm proud of is the environment that my team and I have created.
We've worked incredibly hard to build a certain mentality within the restaurant, and that starts in the kitchen but spreads to the KPs, the front-of-house team and eventually the guests. That's the bigger picture.
You want people to walk into the restaurant and immediately feel comfortable. If the mentality we've built behind the scenes eventually becomes the feeling somebody experiences when they sit down to eat, then we've achieved something.
