Home Kitchen, a fine dining restaurant staffed by homeless people, is opening in London

Home Kitchen will open at a site in Primrose Hill with Adam Simmonds as its executive chef and a leadership team drawn from the catering and hospitality, advertising, and charity sectors.

Announcing the news on Instagram, hospitality entrepreneur Andrew Fishwick, who leads recently created acquisition and investment vehicle Hestia Hospitality​​, said the project had been 18 months in the making and that he hoped the Primrose Hill restaurant would be the first of many.

“I’ve had the privilege of working with this group of legends for the past 18 months in building and developing Home Kitchen - the social impact restaurant and today we announced our launch,” he said.

“Primrose Hill chosen as the first site for a fine dining concept with a mission to scale to other cities with significant homeless communities – in the UK and internationally.”

Simmonds, who was recently appointed chef-patron at King’s Cross hotel The Megaro​​, opened a pop-up version of Home Kitchen back in 2022 in cooperation with Soup Kitchen London. The restaurant was staffed by 16 homeless people ran for 13 weeks at a former Frankie & Benny’s site in London Victoria Station.

Staff were paid a London living wage and provided with a three-week hospitality course to provide them with the skills required to get another hospitality job afterwards.

Fishwick, who is the chair of marketing consultancy SALT and was previously CEO of restaurant partnerships firm The Pepper Collective, leads Hestia alongside a management and advisor team. The group recently secured a £50m ‘war chest’ to target acquisitions and has reopened the former Pensons site in Worcestershire as Native ​​with chef Ivan Tisdall-Downes and business partner Imogen Davis.

It has also invested in Filipino chef Ferdinand ‘Budgie’ Montoya’s Sarap and Apoy brands.