Meet Lewis de Haas: Childhood Allotment to Crispin's Menu

There is a particular kind of education that happens before culinary school. Before the knife work and the brigade, before the Michelin kitchens and the early mornings: the kind that happens between rows of beans, or standing at a kitchen counter watching someone else's hands.

For Lewis de Haas, executive chef at Crispin and the man behind the menus across HAM Restaurants, that education began on his mother's allotment in Dorset. He has been building on it ever since.

Growing up in Dorset

Lewis grew up watching food happen. His mother and grandfather kept an allotment, and from an early age Lewis was part of it, not as an observer, but as someone who understood that a carrot pulled from the ground and a carrot from a supermarket shelf were, in some meaningful way, different objects.

Lewis's drive to stay close to the source never faded. At Crispin, that means deep supplier relationships, weekly-changing menus, and celebrating humble vegetables alongside prime beef.

The allotment and what it taught

What an allotment teaches, above all else, is patience and specificity. You learn what things actually taste like at the right moment. You learn that seasons are not a marketing category; they are a set of real, hard constraints on what is worth cooking and what isn't.

Lewis applies both lessons at Crispin's White's Row kitchen. The menu changes constantly, driven by produce, not gimmicks. GBC praised his "real confidence with vegetables," and guests confirm: the most memorable dish rarely features premium protein.

Petersham Nurseries: the produce education

After early years in hotel kitchens, Brown's Hotel in Mayfair under Mark Hix, then Le Caprice in St James's, Lewis arrived at Petersham Nurseries as sous chef. It was the moment his cooking found its shape.

At Petersham, the relationship between the garden and the kitchen is not a concept: it is the operating principle. Lewis worked closely with produce from Haye Farm in Dorset, designing menus around what was actually available, learning to let the ingredient set the agenda rather than the other way round.

The Shed: sharpening the philosophy

From Petersham, Lewis moved to The Shed in Notting Hill as head chef, a restaurant built on the specific produce culture of British farming. The Shed deepened something already present in Lewis's approach: the idea that a seasonal, independent-led menu is not a constraint on creativity, but the source of it.

The freedom to cook across cuisines, not tied to a single tradition, but guided instead by what is best right now and where it comes from, became the way he works. It is the way Crispin works, too.

Finding Crispin

In mid-2021, Lewis joined Crispin at White's Row, less than five minutes from Liverpool Street station in the heart of east London dining. The fit was immediate.

Lewis has since been promoted to Group Executive Chef across HAM Restaurants, overseeing the kitchens of all our restaurants.

The Crispin kitchen team at Spitalfields continues to work in the spirit he established: seasonal, produce-led, collaboratively minded. Guest chef dinners with the likes of Diarmuid Goodwin of Sager & Wilde and teams from Pidgin and Retan have become a defining part of how we cook and think.

Lewis's cooking today

The menu at Crispin Spitalfields changes with every season, sometimes more often. Sharing plates built around what is best from independent British and European producers.

The cocktail programme works directly alongside the kitchen to minimise waste. Sommelier Alex Price's wine list is sourced with the same care applied to the food: small producers, organic and biodynamic practices, rare grape varieties, nothing that doesn't carry a sense of where it came from.

Book to experience his kitchen

The best way to understand what Lewis has built and what that allotment in Dorset set in motion, is to come and eat it.

Crispin Spitalfields is open Monday to Saturday for lunch and dinner, at White's Row, London E1 7NF, a short walk from Liverpool Street station. Book via the Crispin Spitalfields restaurant page.

For a snack and a glass of something from Daniel Ilsley's wine list in Soho, Bar Crispin at 19 Kingly Street is open seven days a week.