A talented Carbis Bay chef and restauranteur certainly knows the recipe to success after being recognised in the New Year’s Honours List.

Adam Handling, who owns Ugly Butterfly, has been awarded Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to hospitality and international trade.

He is one of the foremost British chefs of his generation leading in the culinary arts but also in his dedication to sustainability, industry education, staff welfare, pioneering charitable collaborations and promoting British food, producers and ingredients on a global platform.

Adam has particularly been awarded the prestigious accolade after being appointed Ambassador to the UK Government’s GREAT campaign in 2022.

The international marketing campaign aims to create jobs and growth for the UK by presenting the very best of Britain and Northern Ireland to the world. 

Adam was chosen to be an ambassador as he represents the best of British in UK hospitality, alongside his passion for sustainability in the industry, finding creative and zero-waste solutions across the Adam Handling Restaurant Group.

Operating in 164 countries, GREAT unites the efforts of 22 government departments and arms-length bodies, working with more than 750 British partners across the globe every year.

Born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1988, Adam has a number of impressive awards under his belt, including Scottish Chef of the Year, British Culinary Federation’s Chef of the Year, Craft Guild of Chefs Restaurant Chef Award. 

He was the youngest person to be one of the Caterer’s ‘30 under 30 to watch’ in the Acorn Awards and was also named Restaurateur of the Year in the British GQ Food and Drink Awards. 

Awards for his restaurants span from the ‘Sustainable Practices Award’ in the CLASS Bar Awards for Ugly Butterfly and ‘Best Pub for Food’ in the Great British Pub Awards for The Loch and the Tyne, to the Group being awarded the ‘Judges Special Achievement Award’ at the Institute of Hospitality Awards, and multiple inclusions in Top 50 and Top 100 lists, including Frog being listed 9th in the UK in the National Restaurant Awards.

Adam was crowned ‘Champion of Champions’ on the BBC’s Great British Menu in 2023, and his Majestic Chicken Pie was voted the winning dish on The One Show’s Coronation Dish competition. 

He also created an official recipe for HRH King Charles III’s Coronation as part of his GREAT Ambassadorship, where he presented a Strawberry and Ginger Trifle, which was made at Coronation celebrations across the UK.

The chef is passionate about education and inspiring the next generation, as well as those already in hospitality, to be more sustainable and to pursue hospitality as an exciting and rewarding career prospect. 

Adam is an ambassador and judge for multiple professional competitions and charitable organisations, including chair of Judges for Springboard’s FutureChef competition, judge of Craft Guild of Chefs Young National Chef of the Year award, head chef judge for the Young Chef Young Waiter competition, and ambassador for The Felix Project, a charity that fights hunger and food waste by rescuing surplus food from the food industry and delivering it to over 900 frontline charities and schools.

Adam started out his culinary career at Gleneagles at the age of 16 where he was the first ever apprentice chef, before he went on to become Fairmont’s youngest ever Head Chef.

It was during taking a year out travelling the world, particularly visiting Japan, that Adam forged a passion for zero waste, which involves creating drinks, dishes and bar snacks from off cuts that are usually thrown away.

He brought this zero-waste ethos back with him to London and started to create The Frog restaurant at Covent Garden in London and launched the Adam Handling Restaurant Group, which has seen him open venues around the country including his flagship cocktail bar, Eve bar, situated beneath his Michelin-starred flagship restaurant The Frog.

There is also the Loch & the Tyne – L&T for short – which the group’s restaurant and pub, with guest bedrooms in the countryside of Old Windsor.

Adam said: “This truly is my proudest achievement yet, to the point that I still keep pinching myself thinking that this just can't be real. 

“I’ve always been quite a self-motivating person and I’ve set myself goals. 

“One of those goals has always been to promote sustainable British food - it's to work closely with farmers and suppliers to source incredible quality ingredients, it's to use ingredients in their entirety and it's to never a waste of thing, whilst changing the perception of sustainability and making it luxury.

“I want to help change the way Britain thinks about food and how British food is seen around the world.

“It’s incredible to be appointed an MBE for two things that mean the most to me - education and hospitality. 

"I always instil education, inspiration, motivation into my team - that’s our ethos and how we work every day. 

"Inspiring not only my team but also our guests, the future of the industry and the wider public in terms of what British food is all about, in a sustainable and luxury manner, is what I set out to do and what I intend to continue to focus on.

“I am so overwhelmingly happy - this is, to date, the most heart-warming, humbling recognition I've ever received in my almost 20 years of cooking. 

"Thanks to everyone who has been in my life, who have both positively and negatively contributed - you have all been part of making me who I am today, and I really do hope I can make the UK proud."