At first glance, the restaurant seems like any other on the quaint street in north London’s Primrose Hill: staff are busy preparing for a fully booked night, tables are laid and menus organised. What is different at this newly opened restaurant is that it has a Michelin-starred chef and is staffed almost entirely by people who have experienced homelessness.
“We’ve given it a new identity and a purpose,” says Adam Simmonds, the multi-award-winning chef behind Home Kitchen, which opened last week. “Without a purpose, it’s nothing, right?”
The restaurant employs 16 people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless, and is a response to two problems. Michael Brown, a co-founder, says one is staff shortages in the industry and the other is the “very flawed public perceptions of what it is to be homeless”.
As a volunteer at Soup Kitchen London, the question he was asked the most was “Do you know of any jobs going?” It was ludicrous to him that so many people were willing and ready to work, but there were almost no opportunities for them.
“We just thought, hang on a minute, there’s a rich resource of people who want economic opportunities. We can do something about this.”
Asked why he is trying to deal with the issue through fine dining, he says: “If you can change perceptions in that world, you can change them anywhere.”
In the kitchen, staff report to a professional head chef and, on the restaurant floor, are supported by a general manager and an assistant general manager. They are on full-time contracts. There are “no zero-hours contracts you usually find in hospitality”, Brown says, and staff are paid above the London living wage. Travel is subsidised.
Alongside the in-house training, staff receive a qualification from the social enterprise Beyond Food, and go on to complete a pro-culinary skills certification at Westminster Kingsway College. “And this is what this is about. It’s about giving people a platform,” Simmonds adds.
Brown says that for many people, their only exposure to homelessness is someone on the street asking them for money, “but actually that’s a tiny part of the story”.
Lily was an asylum seeker and did not have permission to work in the UK. She became homeless when she was moved out of Home Office accommodation. “It’s really hard to find somewhere for the first time in this country,” she says.
Having gained the legal right to work, Lily says it felt “unbelievable” to get the job at Home Kitchen. On her first day, she was told the restaurant would become her second home – the staff, her family. “I think it is like my second home and every time I come here, I come with a smile and every time I leave, I’m leaving with my smile … and I love my job,” she says.
Jeremy, like all the staff, was given a choice of working front of house or in the kitchen. For him, working as a food runner was a no-brainer. “I don’t mind eating food, but making it is not for me,” he says.
“I didn’t have a stable upbringing – no parents, no family, no support and when you don’t come from a stable environment, you don’t have those support networks, you’re going to struggle,” he says. Because of difficult circumstances that followed, he found himself homeless. This job at Home Kitchen is Jeremy’s first.
Despite the challenges he has faced, he is eager to avoid being treated any differently. “We’re here to do a job, build ourselves up. We don’t want pity, we want to be treated like everyone else. We’ve been given a chance that perhaps we have not had in our lives. And the fine dining environment, this is fantastic.”
Of the eight non-professional staff in the kitchen, only two have a background in cooking, none in fine dining. “To be able to teach people that haven’t cooked before, and to see them put stuff on the plate and serve it is mental … it’s personal to me, the whole thing. I want our staff to succeed more than anything else,” Simmonds says.
The restaurant serves two menus – a la carte and a set tasting menu. It was inspired by Simmonds’ own preferences and considerations of different techniques to teach the chefs.
“The menu is still the same as what I do normally, but we’ve just drummed it down a hell of a lot,” he adds. “They’re learning, we’re learning.”
