IN 2010 James Lowe, Ben Greeno and Isaac McHale, three British chefs in their late 20s, joined forces to host a series of pop-up dinners around London that quickly became the hottest reservation in town. Calling themselves the Young Turks collective, they introduced a new style of dining out to the city—mixing elevated food with a relaxed rock ’n’ roll vibe—inspired by stints working in Copenhagen, New York and Sydney. A manifesto laid out the lofty goal of “promoting a new approach to British cooking,” focused “on small producers,” bringing “vegetables to the fore,” and “collaboration and helpfulness over secrecy.”  “We are young and ambitious,” they wrote, “have worked in some of the best kitchens in the world, and now we want to do things our way.”  Six years later the Young Turks, now in their mid 30s, have each moved on to new ventures, but the ideas they espoused have become the status quo for a generation of ambitious young London chefs. The city’s most dynamic, buzzed-about new places to eat are built on techniques and ingredients from all over the globe. Working abroad is the new normal. Formality is out, cooperation is in. “We wanted to do a restaurant for our generation,” said Mr. McHale, who opened his own acclaimed spot, the Clove Club, in 2013. “A place for people like us to walk into but still serve food with ambition and skill.”  London was a very different city back when the Young Turks began, with an insular food scene dominated at the high-end by a handful of chefs running Michelin-starred white-tablecloth restaurants. Surviving and thriving in those kitchens—like graduating Oxford or Cambridge—was considered by many the only sure path to success. “When I first came to London there were only a few chefs anyone wanted to work for,” said James Knappett, 33, a contemporary of the Young Turks who spent years off and on working for Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant group. London’s top kitchens were once intensely competitive places to work. “I wasn’t allowed to eat at certain other restaurants, to talk to their chefs,” said Mr. Knappett.  Those days are gone. “My guys now, I kick their ass if they don’t go eat at the Clove Club or see what James [Lowe] is doing,” said Mr. Knappett of his staff at Kitchen Table, the tasting menu chef’s counter he opened in 2012. Young London chefs today share investor contacts and real estate leads when new restaurant projects are brewing, cook together at charity events, sometimes swap staff, ingredients, even recipes. “When I was younger I felt like every chef was competing against each other,” said Lee Westcott, 30, of the two-year-old Typing Room in East London. “Now it feels like we’re driving each other forward.”  Many in this generation have passed through the same kitchens on their way up, but it’s a new circuit. “There’s a lot more foreign travel, broadening of experience, looking to the world rather than other London restaurants,” said Mr. McHale. All of the Young Turks, along with Mr. Knappett and many of his contemporaries, spent time at Noma, the pioneering New Nordic restaurant in Copenhagen, a puddle-jump flight away. And more than a few of the city’s new food stars also worked in New York, cooking at places like WD-50 and Thomas Keller’s Per Se. “I think its fair to say we were all well-trained,” said Tom Sellers, 28, who launched his restaurant Story in 2014 (after working at Noma and Per Se).  The auteur projects these chefs have opened in the last few years have already redefined what a top-flight modern British restaurant should be. “I used to save to go out once a month to splash out for one meal,” said Mr. Westcott. “I’d sit in the restaurant as a chef and feel uncomfortable. I thought, that’s just the way it was when you went out for fine dining. The food was good but it wasn’t enjoyable. Now you go out to the best restaurants, there’s a relaxed feel, and you sit there and have fun.”  When Young Turk James Lowe opened his bare-bones restaurant in East London in 2014, he named it after his grandmother. There’s nothing old-fashioned, though, about his spare, gestural cooking—offbeat combinations of a few exceptional, barely fussed-with ingredients. Raw day-boat scallops might be paired with candied blood orange and cured cod roe; spring onions, smoky from the grill, draped over a custardy slow-poached egg along with ripe Riseley cheese. The menu changes daily based on what comes in. “I think of it as common-sense cooking,” he said, “buying from good fishermen, good farms, from people of similar mindset, just sensible, not reinventing the wheel.” lyleslondon.com  Isaac McHale’s solo debut took over a former Chinese restaurant in the old Shoreditch Town Hall, a building with a lot of history. “The first-ever televised boxing match in the U.K. was held upstairs,” he said. Mr. McHale, who was raised in Scotland, is making history of his own in the old hall these days, serving some of the most exciting modern British cooking in London. His tasting menus, featuring as many as 18 small bites, reflect a restless, well-traveled palate and mix exotic and local tastes. A warm Danish-style donut might arrive stuffed with sweet-savory haggis; roast lamb belly pairs with mint jelly and nori puree. There’s a serious wine list, professional service and a lively bar scene up front. “We’re trying to be sharper, better, not stuffier,” said Mr. McHale. thecloveclub.com  Ollie Dabbous opened this place in a Soho industrial space in 2012 with ambitious, moderately priced, vaguely Nordic food. “We were one of the first restaurants of this kind, the antithesis of fine dining,” he said. A recent three-course lunch—a great deal at £28 ($40)—began with sea-trout tartare strewn in lovage and marigolds, and finished with a rhubarb-geranium crumble. “The food’s quite feminine, the interior masculine,” he said. “I like the juxtaposition.” dabbous.co.uk  This speakeasy chef’s counter is hidden at the back of an artisanal hot dog joint in Soho. James Knappett and his sommelier wife, Sandia Chang, opened both spots at once, inspired in part by New York bar PDT. “A lot of people who come in for hot dogs don’t know it’s there,” said Mr. Knappett of his 19-stool tasting-menu restaurant, tucked behind a curtain. Bookings are hard to secure for the ever evolving nightly feast—14 courses or more, many featuring ingredients the chef has foraged. You might find chicken skin slathered in bacon jam, or ox-heart tartare. kitchentablelondon.co.uk  Tom Sellers started cooking professionally at 16, which helps explain how he managed to open one of London’s most ambitious restaurants by his 26th birthday. On the site of a decommissioned Victorian loo just south of the Thames, the restaurant recounts his life story through a tasting menu presented in chapters. Chapter two, “Childhood,” features a beef-fat candle with house-made bread for sopping drippings as they melt. A picnic basket of cheese and pickles arrives near the end, paired with the restaurant’s own mead. You’ll find the recipes in Mr. Sellers’ debut cookbook, out this fall. restaurantstory.co.uk  In 2014, Lee Westcott took over the restaurant space in Bethnal Green’s Town Hall hotel from Nuno Mendes, a Portuguese transplant who’s been a father figure to many British chefs. “It was big shoes to fill—one of the most liked chefs in the industry,” said Mr. Westcott. Modernist touches abound, in dishes like sous-vide duck egg with salt-baked celeriac and Morteau sausage nitrogen-frozen then shaved into porky snow. A veteran of Per Se and Noma, Mr. Westcott is less of a locavore zealot than many of his cohort. He sources all over and matches a modern sensibility with haute-French technique. “My food’s a mix of everything I’ve learned, everywhere I’ve worked,” he said. typingroom.com
The chefs of London’s Young Turks collective and their contemporaries have come of age with ambitious restaurants that are redefining the city’s dining scene.