Executive Chef Michael Reid, who brought the world’s highest grade of kobe beef ever seen in London last year, will make his permanent return from Australia to London this winter. Arriving to work with M Founder Martin Williams on the restaurant group’s imminent expansion, Mike will oversee the opening of M Victoria at the end of the year. He will also be headlining the Events in the Sky dinners towards the end of this week, cooking his acclaimed cuisine at over 25 metres high over the capital.
After an initial apprenticeship at The In & Out club in St James, Mike trained at both Le Gavroche and Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. At these two iconic London restaurants, Mike’s skills were honed under the tutelage of celebrated chefs Michel Roux Jr., Simone Zanoni and Mr Ramsay himself.
In April 2007, Mike joined the team at Gaucho restaurants, swiftly earning himself a position as Head Chef. He ran both the Richmond and O2 sites before receiving a promotion to the Executive Chef position for the entire Gaucho Group. He was responsible for overseeing all food aspects of the business, running the gamut from menu development to training and recruitment to overseeing the entirety of Gaucho’s notorious events. From 2011, he additionally developed and supervised the burgeoning CAU restaurant franchise.
In 2013, Mike left London to rattle the pans in Australia’s thriving restaurant scene, spending six months undertaking stages at a number of Melbourne’s most celebrated restaurants. These included a stint working with world-class chef Ben Shewry in Attica, which in 2015 was ranked number 32 of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. He then worked in Andrew Macdonald’s two Hat restaurant Cutler and Co, which offered him deep insight into Modern Australian cuisine and its many Asian influences.
The past two years have seen Michael work closely with Australian celebrity chef, Shannon Bennett in his award-winning restaurant, Vue de Monde and the recently opened Jardin Tan. Michael has also worked alongside some of Australia’s finest chefs, including George Colombaris and Peter Gilmore and cooked alongside Heston Blumenthal at The Skinny Duck.
With a cookbook planned for Spring 2016, Mike returns to the UK to open M Victoria.
M Bank, 2-3 Threadneedle Walk, 60 Threadneedle Street, London, EC2 8HP
M Victoria, The Zig Zag Building, 70 Victoria Street, London, SW1E 6SQ
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