Career Spotlight: Khanh Tran-Thanh, Head Chef at Angelina

Khanh Tran-Thanh spent sixteen years working in sustainability before she ever wore chef whites professionally. Cooking was the thing she did in her spare time — volunteering in community kitchens, catering events at weekends — until a chance shift with Made in Hackney, run out of a Dalston restaurant during lockdown, changed everything. She asked the owner for a job on the spot. Five years later, she is Head Chef at Angelina, one of London's most exciting restaurants, whose thirteen-course kaiseki tasting menu changes in its entirety every eight weeks.

What Khanh has achieved is remarkable by any measure: an entire culinary career, from junior CDP to Head Chef, built from scratch inside a single kitchen in under five years. Without the benefit of seeing how a wide range of other kitchens run, she trusted the experience she already had, leaning into the leadership, the level head, and the people skills honed over a first career, and let her hard work speak for itself.

In this Career Spotlight, Khanh talks about racing through the ranks as a relative newcomer, why a head chef needs to be as comfortable with a spreadsheet as with a stove, and why patience is key to the advice she'd pass on to anyone starting out.

What was the journey that led you to your current role?

Working as a chef is actually my second career. Before Angelina, I worked for 16 years for a non-profit organisation in sustainability. But I always craved cooking, so I spent a lot of my free time volunteering for community kitchens and food charities. Then, one day, my day job gave me my first gig as a private chef. Soon after I set up a catering company and cooked for events at the weekend. I eventually left the day job to focus on cooking and travelled to Vietnam to stage in kitchens but was then forced out due to COVID. 

My entry into the Angelina kitchen was serendipitous. I returned to London during COVID without a job. Restaurants were still in lockdown so I looked for volunteering opportunities again. I came across Made in Hackney, a non-profit who was running a community kitchen out of Angelina. I turned up for my shift and met Josh, the founder and owner of Angelina. I went home that day with a really good feeling about the restaurant. I immediately got in touch with Josh and asked for a job, as the lockdown was about to be lifted. I started the following week as a junior CDP. I worked about a year or so before being promoted to Sous-Chef in 2021 and served in that role for 4 years before being made Head Chef in April 2025.

What’s been the hardest thing about your career journey so far and how did you get through it?

As a relative newcomer in the industry, it has been a tremendous deep dive, a fast and furious race through learning everything from scratch to be a Head Chef. And as 99% percent of my career has been solely in one place, I do not benefit from having ‘seen’ how other kitchens are run. My understanding of my own progression and where I should be career wise and by when, has been at best guesswork. As a Head Chef now, I realise that I have transferred a lot of the learning and managerial techniques from my previous career. Crucially, I have built confidence and trust in the years of experience I do have under my belt, regardless of where they have been spent. This is what makes me the leader that I am today.

What’s the realistic salary range for your role? 

In London head chef salaries have a broad range depending on the type and size of kitchen you are heading up - in top London restaurants head chefs can earn upwards of £50k.

What’s the most unexpected part of your role?

Stepping into the Head Chef role, I expected to perform some HR responsibilities and I was relatively well prepared having worked as a Team Manager in my first career. But the amount of people management required in this role has taken some getting used to. As head chef you are at the intersection of a complex web of communication flows and managing this is a significant part of my day to day. 

What’s the best part of the job?

Hands down menu development. I can’t tell you how much I love the menu change process. At Angelina, we change our 13-dish tasting menu in its entirety every 8 weeks. I have a few rituals to kickstart the creative process — researching what is best in season, thinking about hero ingredients and stories of the suppliers providing them, doing a fair amount of introspection and looking back at meals that have inspired me over the years, looking at what is being cooked out there. I plant seeds in my mind and they slowly grow over the course of 2 weeks into fully fledged dishes.  

I also really enjoy the kitchen teamwork at play during a busy service rush. It can take time to build effective coordination and good synergy within the team, and when we make it through a difficult service with flying colours to end on a high note, it always feels amazing.

What’s the hardest or most draining part?

Beyond the long hours actually spent in the kitchen, there is always list of tasks waiting when you step out – admin, social media, PR and marketing, keeping track of finances, supplier relations, HR responsibilities, etc which can be draining.

For me it is also not being able to switch off in this endless pursuit of perfection — the perfect dish, the perfect service, the perfect customer feedback. The industry is steadily moving forward and you need to stay abreast of trends or you risk being left behind and becoming irrelevant. So when I’m not physically in the workplace I am still constantly on ‘work mode’. 

What skills matter most in your role beyond the obvious ones?

Adaptability and thinking on your feet (…literally, always on your feet), ability to stay level-headed and lead a team under high pressure and stress, being good with numbers and accounting, excellent people skills.

What did you have to learn the hard way?

Regularly inspect industrial appliances for worn-out or damaged electrical plugs/cords, especially if they are within touching distance...

What advice would you give to someone trying to break into this role today?

Let your hard work speak for itself (don’t brag or show-off!). Be respectful. Break the boundaries of what is expected from you as an entry-level chef.

Be interested. Knowledge is power, be curious, do your job well but also ask (when appropriate!) questions about the business, suppliers, orders, processes and systems that make up the kitchen operations. The sooner and more you get to learn about the in/outs of how a kitchen works the more you can apply this knowledge and grow as a chef beyond the cooking part.

What’s the best piece of advice that YOU were given?

Try to not take things personally. Restaurants can be a volatile environment especially during a hectic service, and actions and words can sometimes be misinterpreted. Letting go of on-the-spot emotional reactions takes practice but it is often very useful. 

Also, be patient with your progress, skills take time to develop.