Spinning plates

The Pod: You’ve been in the cookery world for a
long time. You won the North West Young Chef
of the year award at 17 and have gone on to work
at Michelin Star restaurants across the world.
How have those early experiences informed your
style of cooking?

Kirk Haworth: I’ve been cooking since I was 15. My food has got so much classical understanding because I’ve cooked meat, fish and everything for 16, 17 years of my life – a lot of the real technical stuff comes from that learning. I just work out how I can do that with vegetables. Obviously, the goal is to make them more tasty, more delicious, and more exciting. For me, it’s not about meat or fish imitation. I don’t like that at all. It’s about celebrating nature, celebrating things that come through the earth like fruits and vegetables.

The way I cook now is mainly influenced by my health journey. It comes from a source of pain – it comes from the journey I’ve been on, more than places I’ve worked. It’s coming up to 10 years since I got sick with Lyme disease, and in trying to get better, I’ve learnt a lot of things on the way. The philosophy of my restaurant, Plates, and the food style is purely built on my journey through health.

For instance, if I research an ingredient, and realise it has a lot of amazing medicinal compounds, my job is then to find a way to put that into a dish. When I used to do medicinal tinctures, I would turn the bottle around to see what’s in there, I would google it and read about it – and then I’d think “Oh, this is so interesting, why can I not put this on my cabbage dish or something?”

TP: So, you started to follow a plant-based diet because you were
diagnosed with Lyme disease. Tell us about that journey?

KH: Eight years ago, I’d never heard of vegan or ‘plant-based’. I had a lot of intolerance tests done, and discovered I was intolerant to butter and I was reacting to red meat. There were only about four or five animal products I could eat that weren’t reacting in my body. I had so much chronic pain, my body was so inflamed.

I started to reverse the mindset, basically. Instead of looking at it like you’re trapped in a corner, I started to look at it as: What can we explore? What can we find out? Can I make that soup as delicious as the soup that I made in a two-Michelin star restaurant with loads of butter and cream in it? And the answer was yes! That’s where it kind of unravelled. I thought “Hold on a minute! There’s not just one way of making things delicious.”

Let’s say you’re going to make a watercress soup, and you plan to finish it with 100 grams of butter. It adds that creaminess and fattiness to it, but it takes away the purity of that plant. If you just finish it with some beautiful, delicate olive oil, it accentuates the flavour of the watercress. You get a cleaner
watercress flavour than you would if you’d used butter.

We’re conditioned and programmed in the world of flavouring our palates. If our mother always made some mushroom soup and put loads of cream in it, we just think it isn’t right if it hasn’t got cream in it. It’s about questioning everything, which is what we do at Plates as well.

TP: You were crowned the 2024 winner of the Great British Menu’s Champion of Champions after being the first ever plant-based chef to take part in the competition. How did it feel to take part in the competition, representing plant-based food in this way?

KH: The reason it’s so emotional for me is this is eight years of a journey. Not just through health, but trying to get people to understand what I’ve been trying to do. It’s not been understood, it’s been ignored, and it’s not really been appreciated. To put plant-based food on a stage as prestigious as The Great British Menu, to go up against lobster dishes and scallop dishes and beat them, to come number one with a dessert that hasn’t got any dairy or white sugar – that’s a statement. That moment is eight years of work, a lot of healing and a lot of energy.

TP: You won with your dessert ‘A Taste of Unity’ which was themed around this year’s Olympics games, bringing together influences from across the world. Can you tell us a little more about the inspiration behind the dish?

KH: There’s a lot of talk about sustainability in the world, carbon footprints and all these things. For me, it’s never just about that; it’s about people. It’s about the welfare and the health of people – both close to us and far away. If we look
at supporting people in different countries by doing things right, I think that is sustainable.

If the only people buying vanilla in Tanzania were those from Tanzania, there would be no vanilla business for those families.

Some people are trying to say you shouldn’t buy anything from abroad because it’s not sustainable, but it is sustainable – we are supporting the lives of other people. It’s not just about this country; it’s about supporting people in other places.

If we all support each other by doing the right things in the right ways, then something beautiful can happen. That’s what the Olympic games are, right? It’s all those different countries coming together. The dessert is just me grabbing
those flavours from around the world and bringing them together.

TP: You’re the co-founder of the plant-based restaurant Plates which you launched in 2017 with your sister Keeley. You’re now about to launch your first bricks-and-mortar site in London. How does it feel to have that permanent site?

KH: We’ve been doing Plates for nearly seven years. It’s been a hustle because we had never had our own full space – we’ve only had spaces we’ve shared before. We started by doing pop-ups – there’s so much work that goes into that.
It’s been a long dream to get our own permanent space. Once we do that and we get the team all ready, we can take Plates to another level, for sure.

TP: The menu highlights several courses that featured on Great British Menu, including your winning dessert. Do you have any favourite dishes or any exciting surprises in store for diners that you can tell us about?

KH: For about 18 months we’ve been working on a new bread course which is amazing. It’s a laminated bread, almost like a croissant, and that’s going to be served with seaweed butter. We’ve got an amazing tomato dish we’re working
on with raspberry jam and frozen strawberries. And we’ve got a carrot dish that’s a fragrant carrot with lots of beautiful lime and lemongrass.

TP: Tables at the restaurant are sold out until February 2025, although you’re in the process of opening a new terrace this summer [2024]. How does it feel to get the restaurant ready to receive its first guests?

KH: We’re just so ready now! After all these years, so we’re just so ready to go. We’re so driven, focused and determined that we’re not nervous. Obviously, there’s going to be some nerves when the first guests arrive, but this is what we’ve worked for for such a long time, so we’re more excited than anything.

I’ve been cooking off portable induction hobs and having to borrow friends’ kitchens and make things out of my home. We’ve never had a permanent base where we can settle in, build a team around me fully, and get better. We’re super excited.

TP: You’re proudly representing plant-based food in your cooking. What are your hopes for Plates and, more widely, for vegetarian and vegan cuisine? What do you hope people take away from seeing what you’re doing?

KH: I want my food to make people happy. Food’s such a vehicle for our physical and mental health in so many ways. A restaurant is a place where you can come and forget about things. Hopefully, my food excites people and makes them feel
happy, inspired, and creative.

Our goal is to be the best restaurant in the world – we’ve said this from day
one. We’re not scared of saying it! We have really big dreams – we don’t just want to be the best plant-based restaurant in the world, we want to be the best restaurant! We have to go up against everybody who is cooking, not just people cooking veggies.That’s what we push towards.

Food doesn’t need labels – that’s what I said on the show. We need to stop labels because they put people off from actually trying something. If you think about all those people that have booked for Plates until February, they are just so excited to try the food, they’ve probably even forgotten that they’re eating veggie. That’s the exciting part of it for me: it’s cooking for everyone… If we can
get people to eat more veggies and less of the other, then that’s a really big plus in the world.

The world’s so chaotic right now – it’s more important than ever that people look after their health. If we can do our bit in some way, shape or form with Plates, then I think that’s a good thing.

TP: Sounds great – and clearly keeping you busy! I guess you don’t have time for much else.

KH: Actually, we’re building a farm in France! We’re building a biodynamic
vegetable farm and we’re going to be growing our own teas hopefully. We’re going to be launching that in the middle of summer [2024]. It’s going to be an academy and a cookery school as well. You could come over and do a cookery class, and then have a swim in the pool, relax, read your book, then head to your room to get changed, and eat dinner at night time. I’m also going to be bringing
a lot of exciting chefs over there to cook on different nights.

TP: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us, and we wish you the best of luck with everything.

(UpdatedResponses have been edited for clarity and length. All images courtesy of Safia Shakarchi.)

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This is an article first featured in the Summer/Autumn 2024 issue of our members’ magazine The Pod.

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