About ME

Thanks for visiting my website, I am a Yorkshire-based private dining chef providing unique dining experiences for private events throughout Wharfedale. As a chef and restaurateur with over forty years’ experience of hospitality and entertaining I aim to bring the restaurant experience to your special event, be it an anniversary, birthday, celebratory meal or supper club.  

Over the past forty years I have owned, run and managed several successful restaurants across Wharfedale, including; Monkmans Bistro - Pool in Wharfedale, Monkmans Cookhouse - Ilkley, Monkmans - Ilkley, Monkfish - Ilkley, The Fleece - Addingham, The Wellington Inn - Harrogate. Latterly I worked alongside award winning local butcher David Lishman, as a consultant chef.

In this time, I have built up an amazing network of trusted suppliers across Yorkshire and further afield, many have become friends and share the same ethos of producing locally, working with the seasons and most importantly caring passionately about their product.

This philosophy was passed down to me from my parents, who established the Monkman name in the Wharfe valley over sixty years ago. My parents, Ken and Jenny Monkman, opened a deli restaurant and private dining company in Ilkley, on Brook Street in 1964. They provided hospitality for local businesses and large functions, and sparked my interest in the food and hospitality industry. I joined the family business, and then branched out to run my own award winning restaurants and outside catering company. Since then two of my three boys have become head chefs in their own right, which has kept me abreast of new developments in the kitchen. More recently I have focused on private dining, bringing my expertise and passion for food to create unique dining experiences for events across the Wharfe valley.