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Over a glass of champagne and a bowl of buttermilk fried chicken on a Friday afternoon in 2018, the chef Isaac McHale was bemoaning his lack of work-appropriate footwear. As the chef patron of the two Michelin-starred The Clove Club, he spent evenings in the kitchen, but also popped out to “the dining room to greet guests, sometimes nipping to an awards ceremony then back to the kitchen, or just sitting down for a drink after service”. His usual Boston Birkenstocks, “comfortable as they were, didn’t feel right for those scenarios”, he says.
His drinking buddy, the shoemaker Tim Little, owner of Grenson, liked the sound of the challenge: “I said, give me the brief and I’ll make you something.” McHale wanted a shoe that was comfortable enough to wear for 12 hours a day on his feet, with practicalities including wipe-clean material and a design that can slip off fast, in case of accidents such as, say, a pan of boiling fat that spills on and into the shoe. But just as “French chefs are all beautifully dressed with gorgeous shoes”, he wanted a dressier shoe than his clog.
“Tim sketched and we talked,” McHale says, “then he came with some prototypes, my favourite being the ‘David Bowie moon boots’, which — he will hate me describing it like that — were high-top Chelsea boots with triple-welt soles and elasticated sides. But it felt a bit too high-fashion for the kitchen.”
Little’s final design was a shoe that looks like a formal lace-up Derby, but with an innovative elastic gusset on the side “so you can slip it off quickly without undoing the laces; a little raised, hand-sewn seam on the back so you can kick them off; and a herringbone loop to pull them back on”. The upper is made from a high-end calf leather, “which we use for our dress shoes, but means it doesn’t stain and is easy to clean” and the soles are a “grippy sneaker sole with an inbuilt foot bed, which is very comfortable”.
When Little presented McHale with the pair of chef’s shoes he had designed, made in Grenson’s Northampton factory, he said, “We’re not going to have another conversation about them until you’ve worn them for at least three months. They have to work, not just look good.”
A couple of minor tweaks were required: the height of the footbed was raised to support the ankle more, and some stitching made simpler. McHale (who wore Grenson brogues on his wedding day) says they are “what I wear in the kitchen all day and my feet never hurt”.
Little has grand plans that his “ultimate chef shoe” will replace Birkenstock’s Tokio — originally designed in 1987 for healthcare professionals — as the widely worn shoe of choice for chefs (not only does Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto from TV series The Bear wear them, but recently the Michelin-starred restaurant Pied à Terre uploaded a TikTok video with every chef in its kitchen professing their love of the Birk). He admits the challenge is high: “It can be quite hard to get a chef to give up their chosen footwear — it’s like asking them to switch their favourite knife.” But so far, he has had more good feedback from other chefs he’s asked to test it out, including Clare Smyth, founder of Core by Clare Smyth, Noma’s René Redzepi and Daniel Calvert from Sézanne in Tokyo.
The shoe will be available to purchase widely this week, and dovetails into the collective fascination with what chefs wear in the kitchen, be it Carmy’s perfect white T-shirts (internet sleuths suggest they might be from Japanese label Whitesville, Supreme’s collaboration with Hanes, and German label Merz b. Schwanen), to the rise in restaurant merch, from St John’s “Pig” apron (£27, stjohnrestaurant.com), to the caps the employees at New York’s Russ & Daughters wear ($22.10, russanddaughters.goldbelly.com), to the independent London café-cum-boutique Earl of East’s market bag (£25, earlofeast.com) and London restaurant Jolene’s first clothing drop this month (jackets, £250).
When the designer Faye Toogood recently designed a range of hand-painted uniforms for the staff, including chef Florence Knight, at Sessions Arts Club last year, a limited run of pieces was available to buy and sold out. Little has designed a “forager boot” for his head forager and kitchen staff at his other restaurant and hotel, Boath House, in Scotland; a practical slip-on rubberised leather Chelsea boot, due to go on sale in October.
Little says the interest from the consumer in what the professionals wear in the kitchen marks a rise in “people taking inspiration for fashion from very practical areas”. We may just be commuting to work but we want gorpcore-inspired clothes that could survive a climb up Ben Nevis. “People want things that actually work and are fit for purpose,” Little agrees, “but look good.”
McHale says that his shoes are not only for work events. “They have become my go-to for weddings too — they look great with a suit, and your feet aren’t sore when it’s time to hit the dance floor like they used to be with traditional wooden soles.”
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