The National Restaurant Awards has released its Chef of the Year shortlist for 2026, and the four nominees — Matt Abé, Nieves Barragán Mohacho, Maria Bradford and Clare Smyth — make a credible and genuinely interesting selection at a moment when British restaurant cooking has rarely looked more varied or more confident.
The awards ceremony takes place in London later this year. The Chef of the Year title is among the most closely watched categories in the industry, and the 2026 shortlist touches on the full range of what makes the current restaurant scene compelling: two-star achievement, debut brilliance, long-form sustained excellence, and the ambition to begin again.
Matt Abé
Matt Abé arrives at this shortlist in the middle of one of the more remarkable twelve-month stretches of any chef working in the UK today. Already overseeing the kitchen at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, Abé launched Bonheur — his own standalone tasting menu concept — and within months had secured two Michelin stars, a pace of recognition that the Guide rarely delivers.
Bonheur marks the most public expression of Abé's own culinary voice, distinct from the Restaurant Gordon Ramsay identity that he has helped maintain at three stars for years. The cooking is personal, technically immaculate, and built around a clear point of view. The Michelin recognition validates the quality; the Chef of the Year shortlist validates something more: that the industry is watching and paying attention.
Nieves Barragán Mohacho
Nieves Barragán Mohacho built Sabor into one of the most important Spanish restaurants the UK has ever had — a place that functioned simultaneously as a serious culinary statement and as a genuinely warm and accessible neighbourhood restaurant at its Heddon Street site. The first-floor cocina, with its open grill and the smell of jamón and char, has become one of the defining dining experiences in London.
The shortlist nod comes as Barragán Mohacho prepares to follow Sabor with a long-awaited second project. The details of that opening remain closely held, but the anticipation within the industry is high — both because of what she achieved with Sabor and because the years since have clearly been spent preparing something considered rather than reactive.
Maria Bradford
Maria Bradford is the most recent arrival to national recognition, and in many ways the most striking story on this shortlist. Shwen Shwen, her debut restaurant in Sevenoaks, Kent, opened to exceptional notices and was awarded the Michelin Opening of the Year at the 2026 ceremony — a recognition that goes beyond a standard star award to mark restaurants that have made a distinctive contribution to the dining culture.
Bradford is self-taught, her cooking shaped by her Sierra Leonean heritage and the bold, generously flavoured tradition she grew up with. Shwen Shwen earned a Bib Gourmand to go alongside the Opening of the Year award, and the combination of critical recognition, packed covers and a location outside the London bubble makes Bradford's story one of the most genuinely encouraging in recent memory.
Clare Smyth
Clare Smyth occupies a singular position in British cooking. As the first British female chef to hold and retain three Michelin stars — at Core in Notting Hill — she has operated at the very top of the global fine dining conversation for years. Her inclusion on this shortlist comes as she announces plans to open a Chelsea bistro: a deliberate move toward a more accessible format that will broaden the reach of her cooking without diluting the standards that Core embodies.
The bistro project is being watched carefully by an industry that has been asking for some time whether the UK's most decorated chefs can successfully operate in multiple formats. Smyth's reputation and commercial intelligence make her a compelling candidate to make it work.
What the Shortlist Reflects
Taken together, the four nominations tell a coherent story about where British restaurant cooking is in 2026: technically ambitious and internationally aware; increasingly confident about culinary traditions beyond the French canon; distributed across formats and geographies; and capable of producing and recognising world-class cooking outside the narrow band of London fine dining that has historically dominated these conversations.
The full National Restaurant Awards 2026 shortlists are available at nationalrestaurantawards.co.uk, with the ceremony date to be confirmed.