Karla Knowles Gets Her Own Room

Karla Knowles has spent almost a decade cooking in other people's kitchens. On 3 November she opens the doors of her own. Pam, her first standalone restaurant, takes over 61 Charterhouse Street in Farringdon, a 45-cover room built in partnership with Edouard and Romain Bourrillon of the Maisons Vivantes group.

The opening date was confirmed this week. It makes Knowles one of the busiest chefs in London this autumn: a second restaurant, the fire-led Thai-inspired Aree, is already announced for the old e&o site in Notting Hill in early 2027.

The room

Pam is described as a playful and creative Thai restaurant, an all-day destination where Thai flavours meet European technique and British seasonal produce, with art and music folded into the offer. The room will run a rotating programme of quarterly art exhibitions alongside events with chefs, artists, winemakers and DJs, a structure Knowles road-tested all summer.

The menu sketches released so far point to the cooking she became known for at Kiln: miang kham, the bite-sized betel leaf parcels filled here with British produce; her take on khao soi noi; and roast duck with frites and curry sauce. Thai roots, London larder.

The partnership

The Bourrillon connection matters. Maisons Vivantes is Romain Bourrillon's house of chef-led restaurants, a group that already includes Jusu Brothers and Casa Felicia, and grew out of Cocotte, the Notting Hill rotisserie Bourrillon opened in 2016 and has since taken to five London locations. The model is consistent: back a chef, give them a room with a point of view, and let the kitchen lead.

Pam itself is opening in partnership with Eddy Bourrillon, formerly area manager at Cocotte; Aree will be co-founded by Knowles with Eddy and Romain Bourrillon, with Knowles leading the kitchen at both. It is a structure that puts the chef at the center of the business, not beside it.

The road here

Knowles learned her trade across some of London's most exacting kitchens: Mark Hix's Tramshed in Shoreditch, Petersham Nurseries in Richmond, and Wolf in Stoke Newington. She then took over as head chef at Kiln, the Soho Thai grill famed for its open-fire cooking, seafood and claypots, a FACT Dining Awards London winner where she built a reputation for bold, ingredient-led cooking.

Before the openings she went back to source, travelling through Thailand to study regional cuisines in Bangkok and the north. The menus at both restaurants are expected to draw heavily on those travels alongside everything she absorbed in a decade of London kitchens.

This summer she ran the KARLA pop-up series, a deliberate rehearsal for the restaurants to come: a collaboration with chef and content creator Romany Henry and the social dining app Appetite in July, an art, sake and snacks evening with Cluster and Dream Sake, a fire-led Thai-inspired dinner with Sera in August, and a closing celebration billed as Karla and Friends.

Massive thank you to Lobe Lloyd International for absolutely smashing the design and creative direction once again, and a huge thank you to Noam Beer for sponsoring the event and believing in what we're building. This is just the beginning. We've got an incredible line-up of collaborations coming over the next few months, and I genuinely can't wait to share it all with you.Karla Knowles, on the KARLA pop-up series

What to watch

The interesting question is what a Knowles restaurant looks like when the training wheels come off. At Kiln she cooked someone else's concept brilliantly. Pam is the first menu that is entirely hers: the Thai flavours she has spent years studying, the European technique of her London training, and the British seasons she has spent a decade shopping. The pop-ups suggest a chef who understands that a restaurant is also a room, a playlist and a crowd.

Farringdon, with the Smithfield Market redevelopment rising next door, is a shrewd pitch for that crowd. If Pam lands, Aree gives her the second act within months. London has seen chefs open two rooms at once before; few have done it with this much momentum behind them.