🇬🇧 United Kingdom · Italian cuisine · b. 1968
The most influential Italian-trained chef in modern Britain — chef-patron of the Michelin-starred Murano in Mayfair.
Angela Hartnett is a British chef of Italian and Welsh descent, chef-patron of the one-Michelin-star Murano in Mayfair, London, and one of the most senior and influential female chefs in modern British fine dining. The first woman to be made head chef of a Gordon Ramsay Holdings restaurant — the Connaught's main dining room, which she ran from 2002 to 2007 — she has cooked principally in the Italian regional tradition and is widely credited with bringing serious, technique-driven Italian cuisine into the British fine-dining mainstream.
Hartnett was born in Upminster, east London, in 1968 to an Italian-born mother (from the Bardi-Emilia-Romagna area) and a Welsh father, the youngest of three. She has often spoken about Sunday cooking with her Italian grandmother as her first culinary education. She read history at the University of Cambridge — graduating from Trinity in 1989 — and worked as a holiday courier before moving into hospitality. After a Roux scholarship-funded apprenticeship at La Tante Claire under Pierre Koffmann and several years cooking in Italy (most notably at the family-run La Madia in Liguria), she joined Gordon Ramsay in 1994 at Aubergine — the kitchen Ramsay was then running for Marco Pierre White's group — and became one of his closest and longest-tenured deputies.
In 2001 Ramsay was given the contract to take over the dining room of The Connaught hotel in Mayfair, and appointed Hartnett — then 33 — as head chef. The Connaught restaurant under her opened in November 2002 and held one Michelin star throughout her five-year tenure. She left in 2007 to open Murano in nearby Queen Street, also as part of Gordon Ramsay Holdings; in 2010 she bought the restaurant outright from Ramsay, making it her first solo venture. Murano earned a Michelin star in its first guide (2009) and has held it continuously. She has since added Café Murano (a casual Italian group with three London locations from 2013), Hartnett Holder & Co at Lime Wood in the New Forest (2013, with chef Luke Holder), and the pasta-bar Cucina at Lime Wood. She has been a regular judge on MasterChef: The Professionals since 2017 and presented the BBC2 series Hartnett's Heroes (2016) and Diamond's Tour (2019). Awarded an MBE in 2007 and a CBE in 2017 for services to the hospitality industry, she is also a long-standing patron of the women-in-hospitality charity The Trussell Trust and the LGBT+ network in hospitality, OutLook.
Italian regional cooking, executed with French-school discipline. Hartnett's menus are organised by Italian region rather than by course, and prize ingredient quality and short cooking lists over invention. She has often said the hardest dish on the menu is also the simplest — a properly cooked plate of pasta — and that the Italian grandmother is the ultimate quality-control inspector.
One Michelin star (since 2009); chef-patron since opening in 2008. Bought outright from Gordon Ramsay Holdings in 2010 — her first solo restaurant.
Head chef of the Connaught dining room under Gordon Ramsay Holdings; held one Michelin star throughout her tenure.
Casual Italian group launched in 2013; three London locations.
Italian-influenced country-house restaurant opened 2013 with chef Luke Holder.
Her formative role under Gordon Ramsay, then running Aubergine for the A-Z Restaurants group.
These recipes from our database reflect the italian cooking tradition that Angela works in. They are not direct reproductions of Angela's copyrighted recipes, but traditional dishes inspired by the same culinary heritage.
“Italian food is not difficult. It is unforgiving — which is not the same thing.”
— Cucina (2007), introduction
“Gordon taught me that you cannot be a great chef and a kind chef. He was wrong. I have been trying to prove him wrong for twenty years.”
— The Guardian interview (2018)
Graduates from Trinity College, Cambridge, with a degree in history.
Begins her culinary career on a Roux scholarship at Pierre Koffmann's three-star La Tante Claire in London.
Joins Gordon Ramsay at Aubergine in Chelsea.
Helps open Verre by Gordon Ramsay in Dubai as the project's executive chef.
Becomes head chef of the Connaught dining room — the first woman in the Gordon Ramsay Holdings group to hold a head-chef title.
Awarded an MBE; leaves the Connaught and prepares to open Murano.
Opens Murano on Queen Street, Mayfair, as part of Gordon Ramsay Holdings.
Murano earns a Michelin star in its first eligible guide.
Buys Murano outright from Gordon Ramsay Holdings — her first solo restaurant.
Promoted to CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours; becomes a regular judge on MasterChef: The Professionals.
Yes — for thirteen years. She joined Ramsay at Aubergine in 1994, worked at several Gordon Ramsay Holdings restaurants in London and Dubai, and from 2002 to 2007 was the head chef of the Connaught hotel dining room, which Ramsay's group operated. She remained part of the group through Murano's opening in 2008 and bought the restaurant from Ramsay in 2010.
Yes. Murano's menu is organised by Italian regional tradition, with a particular emphasis on the cooking of Emilia-Romagna and Liguria — the regions Hartnett's mother's family come from. The restaurant takes its name from the Venetian island of Murano.
Murano has held one Michelin star continuously since the 2009 Michelin Guide Great Britain & Ireland — its first eligible guide after opening in November 2008.
Yes. Hartnett read history at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1989. She has often described the period as decisive for the intellectual discipline she later applied to running kitchens, although she did not begin her culinary training until three years after graduation.
Café Murano is Hartnett's casual Italian sister group, opened in 2013. There are three London locations: in St James's, Covent Garden and Bermondsey. The format is shorter Italian regional plates at a lower price point than the flagship.
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