Concept & menu development
Define the food identity and develop dishes around your audience, service style and price point. Refine recipes, portions and presentation into a focused menu.
Andrew D’AMBROSI
Food Concept & Culinary Consulting
Delis. Restaurants. Fast casual. Multiple outlets.
Discuss your projectLondon · International experience
Food with character.
Kitchens built to last.
I’m Andrew D’Ambrosi, a chef and culinary consultant with more than two decades of experience across New York, Miami, France, the Netherlands and London. My experience spans French, Italian, Latin American and pan-Asian cooking, alongside American barbecue, plant-based menus and seafood. I’ve worked across fine dining, restaurant chain openings and chef-led food retail, including co-founding D’Ambrosi Fine Foods in the Cotswolds.
I help owners and hospitality groups turn food ideas into working businesses. My approach combines distinctive cooking with the practical demands of production, service and growth.
How I can help
From the first idea
to the daily service.
Openings & brand expansion
Prepare the kitchen for launch, from prep routines and team training to the first service. Adapt an established brand’s cooking for a new location.
Group operations & multiple outlets
Coordinate purchasing, recipe costing and production across different concepts and locations. Set shared quality standards while preserving what makes each outlet distinct.
Deli & takeaway product development
Develop counter dishes, prepared meals and catering ranges that travel well. Plan batch production, packaging and home-finishing instructions around how the food will be served.
Selected projects
Distinct concepts.
Different ways to eat.
A selection of the businesses and opening menus I’ve helped shape.
Neal’s Yard · 2026–present
Buvette London
Head Chef · International brand opening
Brand transfer · Team training · Opening kitchen leadership
From New York to London.
Trained with Buvette in New York before taking its established culinary approach into the London kitchen. Led kitchen preparation and opening execution, translating the brand’s recipes, routines and standards into a new team and location.
Opening coverage documents the restaurant launch.
The Cotswolds · 2019–2025
D’Ambrosi Fine Foods
Co-founder & Executive Chef · Food retail
Concept creation · Prepared-food products · Retail & catering menus
Restaurant food, made for home.
Created the culinary concept and food range for a chef-led shop, from Southern fried chicken and seafood rolls to seasonal salads, prepared meals and catering. Adapted restaurant cooking for takeaway, home finishing and generous entertaining.
New York · 2015
Avant Garden
Opening chef · Plant-based concept
Plant-based menu development · Culinary identity · Opening execution
Vegetables at the centre.
Developed the opening menu for Overthrow Hospitality’s plant-based restaurant. A kitchen built around vegetables, flavour and technique, with mushrooms, toasts and composed dishes carrying the menu.
Brooklyn · 2013–2015
Bergen Hill
Executive Chef · Seafood concept
Seafood menus · Dish development · Kitchen leadership
Seafood, with a point of view.
Led the food at this Brooklyn seafood restaurant, from crudo to squid cut into tagliatelle. The menu brought precise preparation and an inventive approach to a compact neighbourhood restaurant.
Featured in
Selected career
Across cities,
cultures & cuisines.
The work, in print
“Often electrifying.”
Robert Sietsema’s assessment of the opening menu.
Read the reviewFood for entertaining.
Tatler’s dinner-party directory recommends the menu and connects the cooking to Andrew’s restaurant background.
Read the feature
