While it feels slightly unnatural to select and celebrate people based on their gender, when we started the Female Chef Awards, we did so to readdress the balance. You see, as with many professions across the UK, women are hugely underrepresented in the world of cheffing.
In 2017 The Office for National Statistics reported that just 17% of chef positions were filled by women, meaning under a fifth of chef roles across the UK are held by females. Fewer women in chef positions means fewer role models for girls to look up to, and similarly there aren’t many female faces on cooking shows and food television series either. In our conversations with female chefs, another common theme often emerges, and that’s the issues surrounding childcare and maternity leave. Many women we’ve spoken to think more needs to be done to allow for flexible working in an industry which has historically demanded gruelling shifts and irregular working patterns from its staff. While not every woman will want or need childcare throughout their working life, a work-life balance has to become part of the conversation if we want to truly make kitchens a rewarding place to work.
With these challenges in mind, we want to shine a light on the exceptional talent we are lucky to have here in the UK. It might seem like an ambitious goal but we're hopeful that this will help to inspire the next generation of cooks, so that in the next cohort of chefs there’ll be equal representation for women and no need for lists such as ours. Each year we champion amazing chefs (who just happen to be women!) doing incredible things for the industry, crowning one person the overall winner at the end of each year.
So, while we don’t want to seem tokenistic, we do want to champion women who are doing incredible things in the hospitality sector (and, spoiler alert, there are so, so many). All the chefs we’ve chosen are at the top of their game, flying the flag for incredible cooking and exceptional standards.
Below you’ll find more details on the interviews and awards we’ve previously covered, as well as the chefs shortlisted for this year's Female Chef of the Year Award!
How do we judge the SquareMeal AYALA Female Chef of the Year Awards?
Our esteemed panel of chefs and experts take the lead in determining the winner of the AYALA SquareMeal Female Chef of the Year Awards. We take into account a range of criteria, from creativity and innovation to training and style. It's important that the chefs we highlight provide inspiration for a future generation of women to pick up the cheffing baton, whether that's through specific training opportunities or simply doing incredible things for the industry as a whole.
Included in the judging panel (below, clockwise from top left) are Pete Dreyer (Senior Content Editor at SquareMeal), Laurence Alamanos (Export Manager at AYALA), Elise Mather (Brand Manager at AYALA), Ellie Donnell (Head of Content at SquareMeal), Sally Abé (chef owner of Teal by Sally Abé) and Roberta Hall-McCarron (chef-owner of Eleanore, The Little Chartroom and Ardfern).
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2026 Female Chef of the Year Shortlist
Keep scrolling to read more about the shortlist for the 2026 SquareMeal AYALA Female Chef of the Year, as well as links to the full interviews with each chef. Check back here in October to see who won this year's award.
Nieves Barragán Mohacho, Sabor & Legado
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Nieves Barragán Mohacho's name was etched in London restaurant lore many moons ago: the Bilbao-born chef brought Spanish food to prominence in London in her time at Barrafina, then left to establish one of London's great Spanish restaurants in Sabor. In 2025, she returned with a new restaurant, Legado, which has again smashed perceptions of what Spanish food can be, scooping numerous Restaurant of the Year Awards, and placing in the top three of SquareMeal's Top 100 London Restaurants list.
Read the interview: Nieves Barragán Mohacho
Maria Bradford, Shwen Shwen
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Arguably the huge breakout chef of the last 12 months, few have walked the path that Maria Bradford has walked, from cookbook author and supper club cook to a debut restaurant in Sevenoaks that scoops Michelin's New Opening of the Year award in 2026. Maria ditched a 9-to-5 in accounting to pursue her calling in food, and at Shwen Shwen she's rewriting the cuisine of her Sierra Leonean home for a new audience, drawing on local Kent produce and inspiration from British seasonality.
Read the interview: Maria Bradford
Previous Female Chef Award winners
Looking to find out more on the women we've heroed as our top-class female chefs? Scroll down to learn more about previous winners like Sally Abe in 2021, Skye Gyngell in 2019, and industry icon Angela Hartnett, who was given our first ever Female Chef title in 2018.
Amber Francis: 2025 AYALA SquareMeal Female Chef of the Year
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Amber Francis isn't your typical chef. She started in some of Britain’s most prestigious kitchens, from The Ritz and The Hand and Flowers, to Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. Right on the precipice of kitchen stardom, she made headlines when she traded fine dining for food education, leaving restaurants to join Christ's College Finchley as Head Chef and Senior Food Educator. Since then, Francis has championed the idea that good food should, and can, be available to everyone, not just restaurant diners, becoming a leading voice for school food reform and accessibility. In 2025 she stepped back into the kitchens of BBC's Great British Menu, and came out victorious against some of the best chefs in the country, being crowned the series' Champion of Champions - a feat made all the more extraordinary when she discovered she was pregnant halfway through filming.
Read the interview: Amber Francis
Adejoké Bakare: 2024 AYALA SquareMeal Female Chef of the Year
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Adejoke Bakare took home the award in 2024, the chef patron of trailblazing restaurant Chishuru in London. The chef shot to world prominence in 2024 when she became the first black woman to win a Michelin star in the UK. In the space of five years, her restaurant graduated from a pop-up in Brixton to an essential part of London's dining scene at its bricks-and-mortar site in Fitzrovia, cooking some of the capital's most unique, brilliant food.
Read the interview: Joke Bakare
Roberta Hall-McCarron: 2023 AYALA SquareMeal Female Chef of the Year
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Roberta Hall-McCarron is a true culinary force reshaping Edinburgh’s modern dining scene. After honing her rigorous, clockwork precision under Tom Kitchin at The Kitchin and Dominic Jack at Castle Terrace, she branched out to champion a new era of relaxed fine dining in Leith. Alongside her husband Shaun, she runs three of Edinburgh's gold-standard destination restaurants - Eleanore, Ardfern and The Little Chartroom. We chatted to her about Edinburgh's burgeoning restaurant scene and how she goes about running three restaurants as a new parent.
Read the interview: Roberta Hall-McCarron
Lisa Goodwin-Allen: 2022 AYALA SquareMeal Female Chef of the Year
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Lisa Goodwin-Allen is a titan of modern British cuisine, and her work at Northcote has helped to shape what British food is today. Stepping into the Northcote kitchen at just 23, she became one of the youngest head chefs in the country to maintain a Michelin star - an accolade the Lancashire powerhouse has proudly kept under her decades-long tenure. Beyond her cooking, her true passion lies in mentorship, running a celebrated in-house apprenticeship scheme at Northcote that has produced a new generation of culinary stars.
Read the interview: Lisa Goodwin-Allen
Sally Abé: 2021 AYALA SquareMeal Female Chef of the Year
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It's fair to say, Sally Abé has picked up the mantle for female chefs all over the UK, fighting tirelessly to uncover the reality of kitchen life as a female chef. After a career spent coming up through the ranks at restaurants like The Ledbury, she then shot to prominence after winning and holding a Michelin star at The Harwood Arms. After some time out of London cooking at The Bull, Charlbury, Abé has returned to open one of 2026's hottest restaurants and her first true solo restaurant - Teal by Sally Abé. Here, our 2021 Best Female Chef winner shares her experiences of Michelin-starred kitchens, and some advice for young chefs.
Read the interview: Sally Abé
Skye Gyngell: 2019 AYALA SquareMeal Female Chef of the Year
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Skye Gyngell won the SquareMeal AYALA Female Chef of the Year Award in 2019, after becoming Culinary Director of Heckfield Place, turning both Marle and Hearth into two of the best restaurants in the country. Skye's impact on food in this country can't be overstated. With her focus on hyper-seasonality and locality at Petersham Nurseries, and later at Spring, she was a huge catalyst for change in food sustainability - she was the first to start removing single plastics from kitchens, and was one of the first to champion zero-waste ethics. Skye sadly passed away in 2025, but you can still read our interview with her from 2019, where she talks about biodynamic farming in England, avoiding food wastage and eliminating cling film and reusable bottles.
Read the interview: Skye Gyngell
Angela Hartnett: 2018 AYALA SquareMeal Female Chef of the Year
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Murano and Cafe Murano chef patron Angela Hartnett has, arguably, been the most influential female chef of a generation, in more ways than one. Not only has she led the line with a series of hugely impactful restaurants, but in more recent years she has opened the media door for chefs - not only is she a familiar face on TV, but her podcast Dish (hosted alongside Nick Grimshaw) is right up there with the UK's most listened to. In our interview, she tells us about working hideous hours, the importance of nurturing talent and being the only woman in the kitchen at Gordon Ramsay's nineties restaurant Aubergine.
Read the interview: Angela Hartnett