Oliver Rowe
Joins the expedition for week 1
Oliver Rowe was born and brought up in Camden, North London. His first professional cooking job was as an assistant in an art school kitchen in Tuscany aged 14. Ten years later, in 1997 he returned to Tuscany to embark on a career as a chef. he joined the kitchen at the highly acclaimed Moro in Clerkenwell, part of the team that brought them the Time Out Best New Restaurant award. Three and a half years later he became the Head Chef for the restaurant, Maquis, nominated for Time Out’s Best Local Restaurant award. In 2003 he developed Konstam, a café in London’s King’s Cross and in 2006, in the same area, Konstam at the Prince Albert – London’s first locally sourced restaurant with over 80% of the produce used being sourced from in and around London.
His restaurant was the focus of BBC2’s series ‘The Urban Chef’, which followed Oliver around London in his search for local ingredients along- side the nerve-shredding backdrop of setting up, funding and design- ing the new restaurant. Since the Urban Chef, Oliver has also appeared on Local Food Heroes, Saturday Kitchen, Great Food Live, BBC News, BBC Breakfast, The One Programme, Market Kitchen, London Tonight and was a competitor on Celebrity Eggheads. His radio appearances include London Live, Smooth Fm and LBC.
His public speaking engagements include talks at the Manchester Mu- seum of Science, London’s Science Museum, Kings Cross Business Forum, Eating for Britain, The Houses of Parliament and New Covent Garden.
Oliver & the restaurant have featured in numerous publications including The Times, The Sunday Times, Sunday Times Style Magazine, The Independent, The Telegraph, ES Magazine, Observer Food Monthly, Time Out, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Travel and Leisure.
Oliver is currently writing a book on seasonal food for Faber scheduled for release in spring 2012.
