Alumni Stories: Ayesha Kalaji
Leiths graduate Ayesha Kalaji is executive chef and co-founder of Queen of Cups, a 17th Century coaching inn turned Middle Eastern restaurant in Glastonbury.
Leiths graduate Ayesha Kalaji is executive chef and co-founder of Queen of Cups, a 17th Century coaching inn turned Middle Eastern restaurant in Glastonbury.
Leiths Diploma graduate Helena Busiakiewicz is food content creator for BBC Good Food, an action-packed role that involves recipe development and content creation for BBC Good Food’s website, TikTok, Instagram, print magazine, and sister title Olive.
Hilary Armstrong catches up with Dominque Woolf, Leiths Essentials alumni, on winning the show, working with Jamie Oliver and her new cookbook.
Leiths Diploma Graduates Lilli Taviner and Ellie Seaton both landed jobs on the pastry team at The River Café in London shortly after graduating in 2021. Here they tell us all about working in the legendary restaurant.
Caitlin Walsh knew early on that she wanted to be a chef. She chose not to go to university after A Levels in order to enrol at Leiths, where she was awarded Student of the Year in 2018. Now a chef de partie in pastry at Harrods, Caitlin was this year crowned Royal Academy of Culinary Arts’ Young Pastry Chef of the Year.
Former Leiths student Maria Bradford was born and raised in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone in West Africa. She now lives in Kent, where she runs Shwen Shwen (meaning ‘fancy’ in her native Krio), a high-end catering company, supper club, and online stores specialising in Sierra Leonean cuisine.
Nina Wilson, AKA @thecrewchef to her 176K YouTube followers and 30.2K on Instagram, is a freelance yacht chef who travels the world and records her culinary adventures.
Leiths Diploma graduate Joshua Hunter has had a varied career working at such restaurants as Murano, Kitchen W8, and La Trompette and as a private chef for Tom Cruise and the Beckhams. He now runs Joshua Hunter at Holland & Holland shooting grounds and is the chef patron of new restaurant Hawthorn. We spoke to Joshua about his latest project.
American in London Kelly Orcutt writes Cheers! a weekly newsletter about food, culture, travel, and life in London. Earlier this year Kelly did Part 1 of the Cooking with Confidence course at Leiths School of Food and Wine and wrote a review of her experience. Here’s her story.
Ever wondered what life really is like as a Leiths Diploma student? We caught up with Diploma student Emily Crocker to get a taste of her average day.