The AYALA SquareMeal Female Chef of the Year Series 2025: Amber Francis

Walking down the long driveway to Christ’s College Finchley, it soon becomes clear that this isn’t going to be an ordinary interview. We’re used to buzzing restaurant kitchens, which simmer with quiet intensity; today we’ve arrived right in the middle school lunch service, and the cacophony of a few hundred kids in Christ’s College’s sprawling dining hall.

‘Don’t worry,’ Amber grins, as she trailblazes us through the mayhem. ‘They’ll all be back in class in about 20 minutes.’

Champagne AYALA: Celebrating over 160 years of history, Champagne AYALA was one of the original twenty-six Grandes Marques Champagne Houses. The House received a Royal Warrant in 1908 and became a part of the Bollinger family in 2005. With its longstanding commitment to the restaurant industry, Champagne AYALA is known for its chardonnay driven, low-dosage wines, crafted with precision and delicacy on a boutique scale. These wines are the ultimate epicurean pairing, it’s no wonder they have been served in the UK for over 100 years in many of London’s most prestigious establishments.

With a restaurant kitchen resume that includes The Ritz, The Hand and Flowers, and Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons, Amber has already had ‘the career of a lifetime,’ to quote our very own Managing Editor Ellie Donnell. It’s unprecedented for a head chef with that CV to ditch souffles for school salad bars, but in late 2023 Amber did just that, joining Christ’s College Finchley as Head Chef and Senior Food Educator.

Her move set a new precedent for restaurant chefs moving into education, but the big question was why? As we chat to her, the answer is clear - her passion for food, education and feeding people simmers under every word she speaks, not just in the hush of Michelin-starred restaurants, but in the noisy, fluorescent glow of school canteens.

‘I could’ve continued up the ranks in fine dining,’ she says, ‘but I noticed that even on days off, I was always finding ways to work within communities, whether that was volunteering in soup kitchens, teaching kids how to cook, or supporting vulnerable adults. That was the work that really fuelled me.’

Food wasn’t exactly sacred in her childhood home. Her dad made Christmas dinner once a year, and her mum, by her own admission, wasn’t particularly passionate about cooking. Still, food was always an adventure. A seaside holiday in Devon saw a young Amber cracking into lobster shells at a smart seafood restaurant that opened early just for her and her sister. That early encouragement to be curious planted a seed.

It was a cupcake-making class with a former Michelin-starred pastry chef that really set her on the path. Determined that her future was in the kitchen, she cold-emailed every serious kitchen she could find, tracking her efforts in spreadsheets. It worked. Stages at Le Manoir and The Hand and Flowers followed. Eventually, she landed at The Ritz via the prestigious Royal Academy of Culinary Arts apprenticeship, cementing her skills under the watchful eye of one of the UK’s great mentor chefs, John Williams MBE.

By her mid-20s, she had earned her stripes in some top UK restaurants, working alongside Robin Gill at The Dairy, and then landing as head chef of Shoreditch restaurant Maene. Despite the rapid success, though, something wasn’t clicking.

‘I hoped that when I became a head chef, I’d have power to make positive changes, especially in how restaurants engage with local communities,’ she explains. ‘But the restaurant industry just isn’t set up for that kind of success. It's already tough enough to keep restaurants afloat without also trying to invest in local initiatives.’

So, she flipped the model. Instead of dragging the community into restaurants, she brought her skills into the community.

Rewriting the menu, and the rules

What does it mean to feed a thousand hungry school kids every day? According to Amber, the biggest change from the restaurant world is that it means leaving your ego at the door.

‘In a restaurant, people come for your food. In a school, kids are here to learn and they come here to be nourished. I could serve a nice chilled pea soup, but if they don’t eat it, it defeats the point,’ she laughs.

And yet, she brings that same cheffy sense of care to lunch trays as she once did to tasting menus. Seasonality, supplier relationships, aesthetics - everything matters. Her kitchen serves ‘safety foods’ next to unfamiliar ones, providing options for more and less adventurous eaters. Chicken and chips may still be on the menu, but it’ll sit beside roasted beetroot or a herby potato salad.

You might be surprised how many kids go for the latter. The key, she says, isn’t what you serve, it’s how you serve it.

‘At first, the students threw away a lot of the plated salads,’ she recalls. ‘Then we introduced a salad bar. It was all the same ingredients, but giving students autonomy over their choices made a huge difference.

‘Being a teenager is about figuring out what you do and don’t like. Giving them the freedom to make those decisions, even in small ways like choosing what to eat, is empowering. It’s not about forcing them to eat a vegetable because it’s healthy, but allowing them to decide for themselves.’

Amber lights up talking about these moments. Seeing a kid trying fennel for the first time and liking it, means more to her than any review or award ever could. ‘Teenagers are the most brutally honest critics I’ve ever faced,’ she laughs. ‘Tom Kerridge's reviews are nothing compared to them!’

Motherhood, menus and misconceptions

If navigating the pressures of restaurant life was one mountain, deciding to start a family as a chef was Everest. Did she ever worry that she would have to choose between her career and having a family?

‘Absolutely,’ she says emphatically. ‘It’s a huge issue for men and women in the industry. For women, there’s the added challenge of being the primary caregiver - especially during pregnancy and those early years. 

‘We lose too many talented women from the industry. A lot of them feel like they have to choose between having a family or having a career in restaurants. That’s heartbreaking.’

When Amber competed on Great British Menu, she was pregnant, but didn’t know until a week before filming. She had to tell the producers before her own family, navigating morning sickness while filming, and politely passing on Champagne toasts.

Despite all that, she made it to the final banquet and was then crowned as the show’s overall Champion of Champions. She was the first chef from a school kitchen to do so, and possibly the first to do it while pregnant. ‘I wanted to show that being pregnant is a strength. It doesn’t diminish your capabilities,' she says.

Still, she’s brutally honest about the industry’s failings. Many talented female chefs vanish just as they reach leadership roles, quietly pushed out by inflexible, old-fashioned systems. The solution, she insists, isn’t complex.

‘We pride ourselves on being a flexible industry - shift work, long hours, unpredictability. So why does that flexibility stop at parenting? It shouldn’t. That same adaptability should make this one of the best industries for people balancing work and family.

‘Business owners need to explicitly say: “You are still welcome here as a mother.” If you’re not saying that, the silence can feel like rejection.’

And perhaps more important than anything, Amber’s point is that having kids doesn’t make you less of a chef - it brings strength to the workplace. ‘Parents are overflowing with patience, they’re brilliant problem solvers and time managers. They’re an asset to any team.’

‘I just knew I wanted to make a difference. Even if it was tiny.’

Amber’s achievements in food have put her in a unique place in the food world: respected by top chefs, followed by policymakers, adored by the teenagers she feeds daily. She has become a quietly formidable force, using her voice - from school kitchens to TV - to advocate for better food systems and inclusive workplaces.

‘I didn’t have a master plan,’ she says. ‘I just knew I wanted to make a difference. Even if it was tiny.’

Now, she’s part of national conversations around school food reform, sustainability, and food education. The recent expansion of free school meals to children on Universal Credit? She was part of that campaign. A small cog, maybe, but an important one.

Now, Amber is sailing into uncharted territory as a chef, educator and advocate. In stepping away from the white-hot spotlight of restaurant service, she isn’t just reshaping school meals - she’s also redefining what a chef can do.

Amber’s perfect match for AYALA's Le Blanc de Blancs A/18

The dish: Lemon and Cornish seaweed-cured trout with pickled fennel, chive mayonnaise, English wasabi creme fraiche and rapeseed oil

The Champagne: AYALA Le Blanc de Blancs A/18

Amber explains: 'I wanted something with citrus and freshness but also that sweet, saline note you get from fish, especially chalk stream trout. The AYALA Blanc de Blancs has a nice chalky minerality that works really well with the sweetness and umami of the seaweed-cured fish. Pickled fennel pairs beautifully with cured fish, and using both the fennel bulb and its fronds and flowers brings a full-circle, rounded dish with punchy, herbaceous notes. The chive mayonnaise adds vibrancy and complexity. English wasabi adds a subtle punch, which I felt would work well with Blanc de Blancs. I love that English wasabi is now available - so cool!'

Explore more of our chef interviews in partnership with AYALA, including other chefs shortlisted for the 2025 Female Chef of the Year Award like Abby Lee and Ruth Hansom, and 2024's SquareMeal AYALA Female Chef of the Year, Adejoké Bakare.