The Embassy Chef: Every Day's a Learning Day

What is a plate of food supposed to do in a room full of diplomats? Make the room go quiet.

Craig Harnden was seven when he asked his mother what you call someone who cooks for a living. From packet cake mixes in a Bristol kitchen, he went on to Michelin-starred kitchens in England — including seven years at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons — and four and a half years on Richard Branson’s Necker Island. Then a job at the French Laundry fell through, and he spent two years lost: couch surfing, out of work, in debt. A recruiter finally called with a job he never would have chosen for himself — head chef at the British Embassy in Washington. Fifteen years later, he is still there.

He joins host Lauren Clarke to talk about the mother who called his cooking “edible,” the mentors who taught him what it means to cook, the hard first years in Washington, the afternoon tea for 700 guests on the first day of the King and Queen’s state visit — nine and a half thousand sandwiches, crusts off, real butter — the dish he eats the minute he lands back home, and the kitchen of immigrants that makes it all work: a Polish sous chef worth a six-month wait, and two women from the Dominican Republic.

Plus, Erickson Immigration Group partner Rob Taylor with the news: what the new H-1B integrity executive order does and doesn’t do, expanded social media vetting for TN, TD and I visa applicants, movement in the October 2026 visa bulletin, a federal court blocking the $100,000 H-1B fee, and steep new fees DHS has proposed for OPT and STEM OPT filings.

Resource Links: British Embassy Washington

GUEST: Craig Harnden, Head Chef, British Embassy Washington

HOST: Lauren Clarke

NEWS NERD: Rob Taylor

PRODUCER: Adam Belmar

Interview Date: 10/2/26