Before opening modern British restaurant Dorian, Max Coen already had an impressive resume, including stints at Frantzén and Ikoyi. He came up in the fine dining scene, part of kitchens that won numerous Michelin stars, so at first, he wasn’t sure that a bistro in Notting Hill was the best choice for his debut restaurant. He was hesitant when restaurateur and Notting Hill Fish shop owner Chris D’Sylva initially approached him about partnering on Dorian.
“It was very nerve-wracking at the beginning,” the 28-year-old chef tells Observer, speaking from Dorian before the lunch service in February. He’s soft-spoken and thoughtful, a far cry from the cliché of a young chef often portrayed on TV. “Taking a step away from fine dining and doing a bistro is nothing I thought I would ever do. So there was the pressure of that, making sure it was the correct decision. But the main pressure was just, ‘Will people like my food?’ It was such a risk on my reputation, putting my name out there. It had to succeed.”
He pauses, reflecting. “I remember Chris and I were standing outside the front of the restaurant at one point and he said to me, ‘If this fails, then all my other businesses fail,’” Coen admits. “So there was a lot of pressure.”
Two years later, Dorian is not only succeeding, but thriving. The buzzy restaurant is always full, both for lunch and dinner, and it’s nearly impossible to get a reservation (those in the know are in possession of the dedicated WhatsApp number—something I was given after dining). It also counts David and Victoria Beckham among its loyal diners. The high-end, lively neighborhood bistro approach is clearly effective, even if Coen won’t allow himself to get complacent.
“I still don’t get comfortable in the fact that it’s working to this day,” he acknowledges. “I think it’s important to always be on edge and never know what tomorrow will bring. Tomorrow, we could be empty. Who knows? I’m about 60 percent sure of the fact that it may be working, but I don’t like to get too comfortable, because it keeps me inspired and driven to keep moving forward.”
Coen began his career as a chef 10 years ago, but his love of food goes back even further. Born in the U.K., he spent his early childhood in Los Angeles before his parents moved him back across the pond. Coen credits California for introducing him to ingredients like sea urchin and oysters—not typical choices for a kid. “I remember trying my first oyster and loving it immediately,” he says. “I think I’ve always had an innate love for weird food and interesting bits of ingredients.”
He did not, however, ever imagine himself becoming a chef, and Coen decided to attend university in Newcastle to study philosophy. He lasted three months. “It was a route into university that I didn’t necessarily want to take, but I guess at the time I was just following the path—you finish school, you go to uni, see if you can get a job,” he says. “I think looking back, maybe I was a little bit lost as to what I wanted to do. But I managed to realize I was actually wasting my time and wasting any potential opportunity I had to start a career.” He adds, smiling, “And I hated philosophy. I had no interest in it, anyway.”
After dropping out, Coen went home to Hungerford, a town in Berkshire, and got a job in a pub. Working in a kitchen and experiencing the high-energy vibe of hospitality felt right. Coen announced his plan to pursue cooking to his parents, and his dad replied, “Be sure you want to be a chef because they’re going to shout at you.” At 18, Coen moved to London and got his first real culinary job at Gordon Ramsay’s Maze—where, sadly, Ramsay, a chef known for yelling, never shouted at him. (It would have been a “rite of passage,” Coen jokes.)
“Everything they did was very, very textbook,” Coen remembers of Maze. “Yes, we were cooking steak and making sushi, but I learned how to do everything properly and how to cook properly and work as a chef properly and set up your section. To be surrounded by all these incredible people working at that restaurant at the time and learning how to cook properly from such an early stage of my career was extremely helpful to carve my path forward.”
From there, Coen staged for eight months at Frantzén in Stockholm, which he compares to “being surrounded by Ferrari drivers.” When he returned to London, he spent two years at Kitchen Table, a high-intensity environment that taught him a lot—even if it’s not what he wants now. It’s hard not to conjure up images of The Bear, a TV series about a similarly young and talented chef finding his footing.
“It was a tough kitchen,” Coen says of Kitchen Table. “Gordon wasn’t there shouting, but other people were. But that was great [at the time]. It made me a strong personality. I learned a lot about cooking at a very high level using English produce.”
It was while Coen was working at Ikoyi, after the pandemic, that D’Sylva approached him with an idea. He had found a potential site in Notting Hill, off the main tourist drag, and imagined it could become a local bistro. Coen, however, wasn’t immediately convinced by the word “bistro,” which seemed to evoke something too far removed from the fine dining he had spent his career doing. But he soon “realized that we could make something quite unique, where we spin it with my knowledge of fine dining and technique with the everyday accessibility of a bistro.”
The menu has evolved since the restaurant opened in 2022, but Coen consistently focuses on the top-end produce and proteins. It’s modern British with global influences, like the sweet breads that are glazed in a curry honey hot sauce or the skewered rabbit served alongside sauerkraut. Coen shrugs when asked to define the cuisine. “We just focus on cooking whatever we think is delicious and using the best of the best produce,” he says. “Regardless of how much it costs.”
Finding the best of the best is part of running a restaurant. Coen admits that if it was easy, “it wouldn’t be the best.” The prawns, for example, come from a small farm in Pembrokeshire, Wales, while the citrus is flown in from Valencia, Spain, where the grower offers 200 different types of citrus.
“It’s a case of constant research and then trying to pinpoint what you’re looking for,” Coen explains. “I’m always trying to find the thing that has the most unique flavor profile, but also texture. I love bringing unique things that people have never had to the restaurant. Sometimes, people expect to come here and eat pretty normally. Then you hit them with weird citrus, with the small prawns. It can be unique and they can still feel at home.”
Despite the creative offerings, the most popular order is the steak. On the day I dined at Dorian, the menu featured a bone-in sirloin, a T-bone and a beef ribeye (although, at Coen’s recommendation, I selected the duck, which was served with a clever mandarin orange caramel sauce). The chef estimates that Dorian sells 30 to 40 steaks per day, adding up to around 300 a week. The steaks, which are dry-aged downstairs, are sourced from a farm in Yorkshire and come from both Japanese Black wagyu cows and German Holstein cows. All of the proteins are grilled in the open kitchen, a highlight of Dorian, and there’s a particular strategy Coen has developed for the steaks.
“It’s a bistro dish, but it’s also got such great technique and flavor behind it,” he explains. “It’s placed in this beef stock reduction and brown butter, and it gets grilled at a really high heat with a 45-minute rest. It takes a lot of skill and precision to get it perfect. I think the beef really brings everything together; all of our core ideas: bistro, technique, flavor, produce. It’s a perfect example of what we try to achieve here.”
Last year, Coen’s efforts were rewarded with a Michelin star—a particularly notable accolade for a bistro, which is typically considered too casual for the award. The chef says the team never set out to earn a star, making it even more incredible and surprising. “When it actually happened and we got the invite to the awards, it was just a great moment for us to recognize everything we’ve done and all the hard work,” he says. “It was one of those times where I was able to stop and appreciate everything.”
An ever better accolade is the trend Dorian has set in Notting Hill, a neighborhood with a vastly growing culinary scene. New restaurants pop up in the area almost weekly, many of them evoking a similar modern bistro vibe.
“You see more fine dining chefs going that route,” Coen says. “And it’s actually humbling for me to see that people want to do what we’ve done. A lot of people see the Notting Hill scene as a bit of a gold mine, which I think it is if you have the right setup. Part of our charm is we’re on this quite shitty road in Notting Hill, towards the shitty end of Notting Hill.”
Although Coen lives near Dorian (which, for the record, is on a pretty nice street), he tends to go out elsewhere. He likes Persian restaurant Berenjak and Thai grill Kiln in Soho, both of which also have open kitchens and prepare their meat dishes on a fiery grill. “I like being part of the action,” he says. “And I like the simplicity. They’re doing something very well, consistently. When we designed Dorian, we put the grill where you could see it from everywhere in the dining room. It acts as a fireplace in a countryside home where it’s cozy in the evening and the orange lights flicker. We also thought the open kitchen would bring some energy and excitement.”
Going forward, Coen hopes to keep developing his menu and never get too comfortable. He’s expanding Dorian later this year with a second location in Holland Park, another bistro focusing on Japanese dishes. He aims to bring positivity into the kitchen in a way that is still serious and focused. In other words, there’s no yelling at Dorian.
“Looking back at some of the places I worked, I definitely learned how not to manage a kitchen and run a kitchen,” Coen says. “Having the experience of being the victim of a lot of aggression at times, you realize that’s not the way to get the best out of someone. We work incredibly hard, but it’s a pleasant, fun place to work and I think that’s why we have amazing people. So far, not shouting has worked.”
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