Isaac Carew Interview: Lessons In Food And Style From A Man With Very Good Taste
There’s a growing appetite for Isaac Carew. As an in-demand male model, he’s no stranger to international campaigns and catwalk shows, but he’s fast becoming as known for his gastronomic chops as his cheekbones.
Classically trained, the 32-year-old has his own YouTube cookery show, The Dirty Dishes. He has a cookbook of the same name. He even has his own chilli sauce, which is almost as hot (right now) as he is. A regular on the London party circuit and pages, he’s tailed by paparazzi around town and by 600,000 followers on Instagram – some of them in real life too.
Meeting him IRL, you can understand why. Decked out in on-point partywear for FashionBeans’ photoshoot with premium British label Reiss, he radiates the magnetism of the professionally good-looking, along with a slight aura of hyperreality – perhaps because you’ve seen him so many times before, or perhaps because he’s bloody tall.
A man-about-London-town with impeccable taste, we’ve joined him in the British capital because who better to rustle up tips on the city’s best nightspots, or pointers on what to wear to them?
Carew was born and raised in London and began honing his taste buds on a stool watching his chef dad cook at Covent Garden restaurant Joe Allen. He decided, age seven, to follow suit. At eight, he was earning £20 every Saturday by picking spinach and cleaned mussels for his old man and godfather (also a chef) at La Bouchée in Kensington.
Having graduated catering college, Carew plied his culinary trade first at House Hotel in Hampstead then the Junction Tavern in Kentish Town, where his colleagues, unbeknownst to him, submitted an application to the Gordon Ramsay Group. He withstood the heat and fiery language at Michelin-starred Angela Hartnett at The Connaught in Mayfair.
Aged 22, he was scouted by a model agent outside Selfridges on Oxford Street and became the face (and hair) of a veritable department store directory’s worth of brands, from commercial to catwalk.
