Elizabeth Allen is a Singaporean-born chef who competed on MasterChef in 2011, and went on to win a Michelin star at the Hackney-based restaurant Pidgin. Since she left she has formed her own company, Kaizen House, with the intention of opening her first restaurant, Shibui, in 2018.
Career
Born in Singapore and raised in Maidenhead, née Allen is Singaporean on her mother's side and English on her father's. She never thought about a career in cooking as a child, and instead trained as an architect at Central St Martin's, London. While there, she realised that she preferred to cook, and was dared to apply to appear on the BBC television series MasterChef. The 2011 series was her first experience of cooking outside of her home or for her friends. She was eliminated early on in the series after producing a smoked duck dish when asked to make a roast dinner: although the resident judges liked the dish, the guest judge said that the smoke flavour was overpowering. Allen decided to continue to pursue a career in cooking, and started to work at a gastropub called The Green Oak in Windsor. After learning the basics there, she moved to the Royal Oak, Paley Street, where she came under the influence of head chef, Dominic Chapman. While she was working there, she attended culinary classes at Westminster Kingsway College on her day off each week for three years. She went on to work at a variety of restaurants, but learnt most at Neil Rankin's Smokehouse restaurant, where she became joint head chef. She complained to Neil: ‘I’m fed up with being put on pastry because I’m a girl’." So, he taught her how to butcher and barbecue meat, which she is now evangelistic about. In 2015, she was invited by James Ramsden and Sam Herlihy to be head chef at Pidgin, which she co-founded with them, their Hackney based restaurant following on from their supper club, the Secret Larder. Shortly after Pidgin was awarded a star in the 2017 Michelin Guide, left. She set up a company called Kaizen House, under which she plans to launch her own restaurant Shibui in 2018. The restaurant will feature wood fired cooking with elements from different cuisines.
