Debut restaurants always tend to attract an extra level of scrutiny, particularly when the chef behind them has worked at some of the best restaurants in London. Aaron Potter’s career-defining roles at Michelin-starred restaurants Trinity and Elystan Street have kept him front and centre of the restaurant stage for more than a decade. Opening his own place was always going to attract attention.
When he launched Wildflowers in October 2024 with his partner and interior designer Laura Hart, there was an assumption that it would reflect his previous ventures – a greatest hits collection from a protégé who cut his teeth at two of London’s greatest fine dining institutions. Instead, diners found something far more relaxed. ‘When we opened, that was a bit of a surprise to people. I think they thought I was going to do Trinity 2.0’, says Aaron.
Wildflowers is an elegant Mediterranean restaurant in Pimlico's modern Newson's Yard development, serving seasonal, elevated sharing dishes in a relaxed dining room. An open kitchen with vast marble-topped counters and a wood-burning grill dominates the space, and despite honing his craft at London’s top tasting menu restaurants, you won’t find a multi-course offering here.
This is a chef with a clear vision and strong instincts, two qualities that were quick to appear from a young age. In many ways, his decision to pursue a career in food went against the odds. ‘I suffered from quite severe allergies when I was younger. No one wanted to allow me in the kitchen,’ he explains. ‘It was anaphylactic.’ Having a serious allergic reaction food didn't deter him – far from it – it just meant that getting a job in a kitchen came with an extra layer of red tape. ‘I had to do allergy tests and go to these restaurant interviews with my results,’ he laughs.
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Dining at Wildflowers is a convivial affair, with generous sharing dishes that are designed to be enjoyed by the table. Photography: Laurie Fletcher
So, why choose a career that went, quite literally, against his biology? His older brother was training to be a chef around the time Aaron was starting to think seriously about his future. Watching him work his way up the ranks at some of the UK’s greatest restaurants (Chewton Glen, Le Manoir, The Fat Duck) made a similar path feel possible. ‘He was so passionate about it, and I guess that rubbed off on me a little bit,’ he says. In fact, Aaron ended up enrolling at Bournemouth and Poole Catering College on the same course his brother had chosen, which included a placement at Adam Byatt’s Trinity. It was supposed to be temporary – a few weeks’ experience – but he ended up staying for 10 years.
Trinity
Stepping into a restaurant like Trinity, at just 17 years old, is like Christmas for a chef, although Trinity back then was a relative infant compared to the institution it’s become. Aaron reminds us of that: ‘It was really small, the kitchen was half the size. It didn’t have the restaurant upstairs, or the star. It was just a really incredible neighbourhood restaurant, but kind of sat under the radar.’
In a way, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Not only did he end up training under one of the greatest chefs of our time, Adam Byatt, but at just 17 – an age when you soak up knowledge like a sponge - he couldn’t have been surrounded by a better team. Aaron reels off a few names: Tom Sellers, Angelo Sato, Graeme Squire. ‘All those chefs are now one- and two-star chefs,’ he says. Point made.
Working alongside a brigade of chefs who would go on to become some of the UK’s greatest culinary heavyweights provided the perfect conditions for Aaron to develop. He spent every day soaking up as much as he could, not just technically, but in the unwavering work ethic they brought to the kitchen. 'I've never seen anything like it,' he says. 'It was the perfect place for me to be.’
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Interior designer Laura Hart designed the space at Wildflowers
Trinity became an incubator for some serious culinary talent, but the engine powering the machine was Adam, a mentor to Aaron, whose instincts as a teacher have helped forge some of the UK's top chefs. Aaron explains that he was never too busy to spend with his team: ‘If he was making pasta, he would call everyone around, and then he would show us five or six different shapes of stuffed pasta’, he says.
The pair had common ground, too. Both happened to complete the same catering course back in Bournemouth, and Aaron was Adam's first ever apprentice, so there was a personal element that meant they were equally invested. 'I think he really wanted me to succeed,’ he says.
The mentorship he received under Adam shaped not just Aaron's technique but his entire approach to running a kitchen - the importance of precision, the value of teaching, the understanding that great cooking comes from a foundation of discipline and care. Over a decade, he worked his way up the ranks from a budding apprentice to a confident head chef, not to mentioning being part of the team that helped Trinity earn a Michelin star.
A new challenge
So, why did he leave? Aaron is clearly an ambitious chef, and the threat of stagnation was enough to guide him towards a new challenge. ‘I didn't want to become part of the furniture,' he says. 'I'd gotten to a point where I'd been head down working for 10 years from 17. There wasn’t a huge amount of play in that time.’
So he briefly swapped Clapham Old Town for sunny Australia, where he fell in love with the country’s love for open-fire cooking, an approach which heavily informs the menu at Wildflowers today. On returning to the UK he landed a head chef role at Elystan Street, which Aaron describes as an ‘accident’, although when Phil Howard calls you up asking you to come in for a chat, we’d argue that’s hardly a coincidence.
‘I think I have a duty of care over these people - that they leave with a bigger skill set than when they arrive.'
It was a role that ended up being bittersweet. Lockdown had just hit, and instead of spending those first few weeks learning the ropes in the kitchen, he was making delivery boxes for people to enjoy Elystan Street at home. So not quite the entrance he was expecting, but there was an upside to not being able to run a normal service: the chance to work shoulder to shoulder with Phil every day. ‘It was a really great opportunity to work side by side in a slightly less structured way. There was a lot more conversation and bouncing off each other. That was a cool experience.’
Still, the period was tumultuous to say the least. He'd never seen the restaurant function on a 'normal' pandemic-free day, and was constantly having to close and re-open the restaurant over those unprecedented few months. He describes it as a 'confusing' time, which is putting it lightly.
Wildflowers
Lockdown, although filled with challenges, wasn't all bad. That no-man's-land period gave the chef some breathing room to think about what he really wanted to do with his career, opening the door a tiny crack to consider a new venture. He just needed someone - namely, Laura - to fling it wide open. ‘She just asked me: what do you want to do?', he explains. 'I said I want to open a restaurant. She was like well let’s open a restaurant.’
Together, the pair started putting pen to paper, jotting down menu ideas, running the numbers and coming up with various versions of what a potential restaurant might look like. Casual, refined, big, intimate – Aaron and Laura tested them all. ‘We came up with maybe 10 or 12 variations,' says Aaron. He also knew it had to answer one simple question: 'What would make business sense, while cooking the food that I really want to cook?’
The answer was Wildflowers. Not a fine dining restaurant, but a warm, convivial space built around the kind of food Aaron loves to eat himself. That distinction mattered. ‘It’s a more relaxed version of the restaurants I've worked in before. I think I very much found my own style of cooking during lockdown. I was just cooking the food that I really wanted to eat and wanted to cook for Laura. So that's the food that naturally felt like the right food to cook in the restaurant.’
Wildflowers’ menus have always focused on vibrant sharing dishes - what restaurants and venues editor Pete Dreyer describes as ‘easy-going deliciousness’ - and is a decision that's paid dividends in the year and a half it's been open. The response Wildflowers has received from day one has been phenomenal, garnering glowing reviews from critics, chefs and locals alike.
Adapt to survive
Wildflowers’ success is even more impressive when you consider the challenges of opening a restaurant in today's climate. Costs are rising, business rates are through the roof, and the bleak outlook of the autumn budget did little to ease the pressure. Getting into the restaurant business is riskier than ever, but Aaron is acutely aware of that fact. ‘I know exactly how much it costs to open a restaurant. It's staggering. I didn't know whether I was capable of that,’ he admits. 'Running a business now, there’s a huge amount of it that’s just survival.'
That mindset meant he tread carefully at the beginning, doing what he had to do, rather than what he wanted to do, to give his restaurant the best possible start. ‘I was so conscious at the beginning of keeping the costs so, so far down and not necessarily using the ingredients I wanted to cook with. And then feeling a little bit like that's not quite what I wanted it to be.'
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'We've got some really amazing young talented chefs': Aaron, Laura and the team at Wildflowers
It takes a smart business owner, not just a brilliant chef, to make a decision like that, but that's where Aaron’s experience leading high-flying professional kitchens really shows. That caution early on means that he now cooks for a full dining room most evenings, giving him the confidence to invest in the produce he so desperately wanted to cook with from day one.
His pragmatism has guided more than just the menu. Wildflowers initially opened with an in-house deli serving pastries, sandwiches and cakes which, considering Londoners’ love for bakeries, seemed like a smart move. But the restaurant's location set back from the main street made footfall unpredictable. 'No one was coming in for it’, explains Aaron. ‘So instead of funnelling a load of money and energy into that, we just changed it.’
Wildflowers is still the sole revenue-maker, but the team have diversified time and again to keep profit margins healthy. Upstairs, they’ve launched Bar Flor, a more casual wine and pintxos bar with a completely different menu, that keeps diners coming through the door, whether for just a drink or a light meal. 'It’s added another string to our bow that's really evolved the restaurant and made it a more efficient business to run,’ explains Aaron.
'Making money in a restaurant is not easy by any stretch of the imagination.'
Wildflowers can also be booked for events and weddings, something Aaron had envisioned for the restaurant from the start. The restaurant actually sits inside London’s oldest timberyard, a covered, temperature-controlled development flooded with natural light. ‘We wanted to be able to flip the entire restaurant and host a wedding here, for example.’
More than just a restaurant, Wildflowers has quickly become a multi-faceted machine: smart, efficient, and forward-thinking. It's a stark reminder of what's required to keep a restaurant open in London today. 'That’s been one of the biggest learning curves', says Aaron. 'Making money in a restaurant is not easy by any stretch of the imagination.'
Investing in its people
It might seem as though it’s already lived many lives, but Wildflowers is only just getting started. If that first year was about ‘survival’, the next year is about focusing on the people that serve the restaurant. With steady footfall and consistent bookings, he can focus more of his energy on both the team, and its guests.
‘I think it's really important that they [the customers] see that we're constantly investing back in the restaurant, evolving, and making the experience of the restaurant better,’ says Aaron. He’s also keen to develop his staff with proper training across all elements of the business, from teaching fish and meat butchery to ensuring the kitchen understands operational costs. 'You can't just take a piece of meat and cut it in half and say that's a portion. They have to understand that that needs to cost £8.50 or £9 for us to generate any money whatsoever out of it.'
Aaron is a fantastic chef, but he's also a mentor and leader, someone who cares deeply about his team and wants to see them suceed. Sound familiar?
‘That was something that Adam was always massive on,’ he says, recalling his mentor at Trinity. ‘I think I have a duty of care over these people - that they leave with a bigger skill set than when they arrive. We've got some really amazing young talented chefs that are really, really hungry to learn and it's our role to teach them how.’ Having learned from some of the best, Wildflowers is certainly a classroom we'd want a seat in.
Catch up on our interviews with last year's Top 100 winners, including our London champion David Carter of AGORA, and UK winner Sat Bains of Restaurant Sat Bains.