Or do you have an existing business – one that needs help, or one that you’re looking to push forward to even greater success with a fresh injection of new ideas? Perhaps your work atmosphere feels a little flat, your team need inspiration, your menu needs shaking up or your kitchen could be more efficient and cost-effective?
Acclaimed London-based chef Ben Spalding runs PuzzleProjects, offering a fresh take on hospitality consultancy for all sectors, the curation and delivery of food and music events (from intimate gatherings to festivals), catering and food production for corporate, public and individual clients globally and at all levels, film, design and more.
Fiercely passionate about the hospitality industry and about sharing his knowledge, skills and experience to benefit others, Ben deals with every consultancy project personally, utilising his extensive contacts and network alongside his PuzzleProjects team to provide a one-stop shop, delivering practical solutions and – more importantly – measurable results.
Ben brings over fifteen years’ experience and hard-earned expertise in the hospitality industry to his role. Having trained at some of the world’s finest Michelin-starred restaurants including 28+ in Gothenburg, Per Se, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, The Ledbury, Bagatelle, The Fat Duck, Le Manoir, Vue de Monde and L’Enclume, he returned to London in 2011 and delivered his unique style of cooking with great success at restaurants including Roganic, John Salt and Aqua in the Shard, winning both personal and professional acclaim along the way. His awards include 3 AA Rosettes at Roganic, the Zagat 30 under 30 award, the ShortList Brit List, the Times 100 Most Influential People.
Wanting to break away for the stiff formality often associated with fine dining and Michelin-starred establishments, Ben created his own successful business, PuzzleProjects, and simultaneously launched several innovative dining concepts including NoRules, WorldDinners and StrippedBack, an exciting, accessible dining experience which played an integral part in the development of London’s high-end street food movement. Huge global interest saw Ben take this concept across Europe and on to the legendary music festival Coachella in Los Angeles.
In addition to delivering several hundred creative events, weddings and private dinners, 2016 saw Ben further develop his creative and operational work with hospitality businesses and brands globally, including The Common in London and Landvetter Airport Hotel in Sweden, Stones Events, Harbour & Jones, Meat Lust, Nisbets, Farmino and Mibrasa. This year he is partnering with Bang & Olufsen to refine his public dining events, exploring ways in which music, another major passion of his, can be introduced into his cooking; he is also opening a summer restaurant in The Last Days of Shoreditch from May and working on a range of international projects across Europe and Asia.
No job is too big, too small, too difficult or too weird. The team pride themselves on being accessible, affordable and easy to work with, and completely unfazed by unusual or challenging work environments or requests.
Ask Ben about:
"We worked with Ben in the early stages of product development of the Farmino plant growing system, and he helped us in numerous ways: providing feedback on our crop flavour and quality, coming up with ideas for interesting crops we could grow, and advising on the practical aspects of operating in busy commercial kitchens. Ben's imagination and experience helped us make a much better product."
"Globalista Konyha / Globalist Kitchen worked with Ben in July 2014. We invited him to Hungary to cook an amazing pop-up at Lake Balaton and two dinners in Budapest, in a secret garden.
His set menus have a perfect flow because he knows what he wants to achieve with a dinner (if you can keep up with the plates, his plating ideas and the amount of ingredients). We have never met any other chef who cooked more than 7 courses. Ben especially likes to play with some basic senses, like touching, smelling, tasting.
It doesn't matter for him if it is a professional kitchen or a mobile kitchen in a garden, the result is the same. The guests didn't really know what to expect but at the end everything comes together and it really gives an extra pleasure when you realise that everything had a meaning. The potato triples its taste, the pork belly melts in the mouth and the beans can be the queen of the menu. This is why his cooking is magical."
