Angela Hartnett

Career

Hartnett learned on the job at a hotel in Cambridge, then at the Sandy Lane Hotel restaurant in Barbados. In 1994, she returned to the UK, and undertook a one-day trial at Gordon Ramsay's first restaurant Aubergine. Alongside Marcus Wareing, she worked six days a week alongside Ramsay for longer than the two weeks Wareing predicted – Ramsay called her a bitch occasionally, alongside his favoured name for her: Dizzy Lizzy. In 2004, she gained her first Michelin star. In 2007, she opened Cielo, a Ramsay Group restaurant in Boca Raton. She made her first television appearance in the first series of ITV1's Hell's Kitchen. Murano was awarded a Michelin star and four AA Rosettes. She created Cafe Murano, a more relaxed setting, in St James in November 2013 and a further site in Covent Garden in July 2015. She has since opened 2 more Cafe Murano's in Bermondsey and Marylebone. In 2013 she opened Merchant's Tavern in collaboration with Neil Borthwick and Canteen founders Dominic Lake and Patrick Clayton-Malone.

From January to March 2016, Hartnett presented Tomorrow’s Food alongside Dara Ó Briain, Chris Bavin and Dr Shini Somara. The BBC One show looks at the cutting-edge technologies and produce appearing in farms, supermarkets, kitchens and restaurants around the world, and how this is transforming the way we grow, buy and eat our food. In 2020, Hartnett joined Bavin and Mary Berry as a judge on the BBC One reality cooking show Best Home Cook, replacing series one judge Dan Doherty.

Hartnett was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2007 New Year Honours for services to the hospitality industry and Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to the hospitality industry and to the National Health Service during the COVID-19 response.

For some years she has been a judge for the BBC Food and Farming Awards. One of her fellow judges, journalist Sheila Dillon, profiled her in "A Life Through Food" on The Food Programme in January 2022. In 2018 Hartnett was profiled in Maya Gallus's documentary The Heat: A Kitchen (R)evolution. In 2022, Hartnett launched the podcast Dish with television and radio presenter Nick Grimshaw in partnership with Waitrose.

The third Cafe Murano location opened in Bermondsey in 2019 and a fourth Cafe Murano location opened in Marylebone in 2025.

Personal life

Hartnett is married to Neil Borthwick, head chef of Hartnett's restaurant Merchant's Tavern and former sous-chef of Phil Howard's Michelin-starred The Square, and lives in Spitalfields with her sister, in a house owned by Hartnett and her brother. She owned a Jack Russell called Alfie that she rescued from Battersea Dogs Home in 2007, and also has a beagle named Otis that was previously owned by her sister Anne. She spends a holiday every year in Bardi, the town from where most of the Welsh-based Italian families can trace their roots.