Luke Thomas, known as the world’s youngest head chef, was in Dubai to launch a new menu at Retro Feasts, and appear at Taste of Dubai, which took place at Media City Ampitheatre from 9 – 11 March. He speaks to Catering News about plans for Dubai and the launch of his new restaurant in London’s Shoreditch later this year.
Could you tell us about your new menu at Retro Feasts?
I’m in town for Taste of Dubai but also to work with the team at Retro Feasts to launch our new menu. We’ve been open about two years, going into year three and it’s really a time for us to play around with some new flavours. We’ve just launched the new BBQ so lots of beautiful meats, marinated, slow cooked and finished on the barbeque, high flavours and getting that beautiful caramelisation on the food. A big focus is on some of our burgers as well – taking the classic Retro burger and then amping it up with layers of brisket, caramelised onion, smoked cheese – so just homing in on some of the food we do but focusing on key flavours of some of those dishes.
Tell us about the new restaurant you are opening in London this year?
Yes we’re opening a restaurant in London at some point this year, hopefully this summer, and that’s really a combination of everything I’ve seen over the past four or five years of travelling, and bringing really amazing cultural experiences that are locally put together and bringing it into one space so it can adapt to the people – whether you’re the guy in town taking his girlfriend out on a date, or taking his family somewhere really nice to hang out, it’s super accessible, super fun, casual, British food but with little bits of world influence from Italy, the Caribbean or from Korea. I think now we’re a world of food and we all know something about food because of social media and what we see on our phones every day. I think having an eclectic mix of food is now ok on a menu – it’s quite nice that you’ve got something for everyone.
