Dean Westcar

Dean won the South West Professional Chef of the year award in 2014

Dean was born and raised in South Africa. He always loved cooking as a child, especially baking cookies for the family. He moved to England at 14 and took a full time job in catering as soon as he left school. He fell in love with being a chef enjoying the passion, creativity and hard work and wanting to learn as much as possible in order to progress his career. Dean was junior sous chef at the 1 Michelin star/3 rosettes Manor House Hotel in Castle Combe, Wiltshire for three years, from where he entered and won the title of South West Professional Chef of the Year in 2014. 2015 brought further competition success for Dean when competed in the BBC’s MasterChef competition, successfully reaching the semi-finals.

In October 2015, Dean took the position of sous chef at the Michelin-starred Lucknam Park, Bath and in 2017 was promoted to head chef in the recently launched Restaurant Hywel Jones by Lucknam Park. Dean also became a recipient of a prestigious Acorn Award in 2017, awarded to 30 leading lights of the industry aged under 30 and reached the final of the Craft Guild of Chefs National Chef of the Year competition the same year.

In early 2020, Dean took a new position as head chef at Crockers in Henley on Thames where he will lead the Thames Chef’s Table.