JEREMY CHAN & Iré Hassan-Odukale

Close personal friends, Chef Jeremy Chan and Restaurant Director Ire Hassan-Odukale opened IKOYI to huge critical acclaim in July 2017. Ikoyi is ranked 42nd on The World's 50 Best Restaurant Awards list 2024 and is located at 180 The Strand, 5 minutes walk from Temple Underground station on the corner of Surrey Street and The Strand. Ikoyi has distinguished itself as a pioneering restaurant in constant evolution: a true form of global modernism - placeless, free, unfixed and personal – whilst symbolising the energy of its international city home earning it two Michelin-stars.

Born in the North West of England, Jeremy’s journey into professional kitchens was far from traditional. An intuitive academic, his early years through to adulthood were spent soaking up the ever-changing world around him. However, his one constant in all this was food, and he early recognised its link to his studies, the senses, and the part culture played too. Fascinated, Chan immersed himself in the culture and tastes of a new world of flavour but approached the ingredients with a considered open mind and little initial aesthetic agenda. Using Iré for feedback, he began combining his culinary skills and ideas with British ingredients.

Born in Nigeria’s bustling coastal city Lagos, in the neighbourhood of Ikoyi, Iré’s formative years were spent surrounded by close family and a rich mix of the food cultures of West Africa. It was here he was exposed, however subliminally, to his family’s main business: the corporate world of insurance and laterally, hotels and hospitality.

What began with an odyssey by the two childhood friends into a rich world of produce, taste and flavour, has resulted in the creation of an elegant, balanced cuisine, totally unique to itself and arguably one of the most innovative in the capital.