Hailing from Tallaght in Dublin, Head Chef and owner Anna Haugh has been cooking professionally for almost 20 years. Having started cooking at l’Ecrivain with Derry Clarke, Anna has spent the last 14 years in London working for celebrated chefs Philip Howard, Shane Osborne and Gordon Ramsay. As now Anna’s first solo venture, Myrtle Restaurant puts a strong emphasis on staff potential and believes an empowered and engaged team leads to the best possible dining experience for customers.

Baltimore native and chef/owner of local hotspot Ida B’s Table, David Thomas is the true embodiment of his culinary catchphrase, “Modern Soul”. He immersed himself in the culture he’d grown up in, as embodied by his family and their values, his grandmother’s Blackfoot and African American heritage, and the food they all shared around her table. This combined with his research into old cookbooks of the South, empowered Chef Thomas to fine tune his approach to cooking and re-dedicate himself to preserving the history and importance of soul food.

Chef Jonathon Sawyer is a proud Clevelander and a graduate of the Pennsylvania Institute of Culinary Arts. He began his culinary career at The Biltmore Hotel in Miami before working in New York City alongside Charlie Palmer at Kitchen 22. Chef Sawyer has since opened several of his own restaurants in Cleveland, including his flagship The Greenhouse Tavern, a French and seasonally inspired gastropub; Noodlecat, a quick service ramen shop focusing on local ingredients and sustainability; and Trentina, a northern Italian inspired restaurant that was named a runner up in Esquire's Best New Restaurants in October 2014. The chef was honored as a recipient of Food & Wine Magazine’s Best New Chef award in 2010. In 2013, he became a finalist for the James Beard Award's Best Chef: Great Lakes, and won the prestigious award in 2015. He is a tireless supporter of the green movement, local agriculture and sustainable businesses both in Northeast Ohio and around the country.

Brought up in the popular seaside town of Whitstable in Kent, James started eating seafood from when he was a young boy. His love of food was passed on from his West Indian mother, who would add her own Caribbean flare to English favourites, and his Scottish father, who introduced him to the best of his heritage’s cuisine. James honed his talents in the kitchens of the prestigious Michelin-starred restaurants The Ledbury and The Harwood Arms, where he established his own refined yet experimental cooking style. He later went on to run the kitchen at James Cochran EC3 before moving on to open his new project 12:51 on Islington’s Upper Street.

Kwame Onwuachi is the James Beard Award-winning executive chef at Kith/Kin. Author of 'Notes from a Young Black Chef’ and owner of the Philly Wing Fry franchise in Washington, D.C. Born on Long Island and raised in New York City, Nigeria, and Louisiana, Onwuachi was first exposed to cooking by his mother, in the family’s modest Bronx apartment. He took that spark of passion and turned it into a career. From toiling in the bowels of oil cleanup ships to working at some of the best restaurants in the world, he has seen and lived his fair share of diversity. He trained at the Culinary Institute of America and opened five restaurants before turning thirty. A former Top Chef contestant, he has been named one of Food & Wine‘s Best New Chefs and a 30 Under 30 honoree by both Zagat and Forbes.

Chef Malcolm Lee is the head chef and owner of Candlenut in Singapore, specialising in Peranakan heritage cuisine with a modern approach. Chef Lee seeks to serve his heritage through a menu of refined taste and techniques, hence creating Candlenut’s authentic yet innovative Peranakan flavours. His hard work, and passion for heritage cuisine and culinary innovation was acknowledged when Candlenut became the first Peranakan restaurant to receive the acclaimed Michelin star in 2016, and again in 2017 and 2018.