Few people can say they’ve been cooking since they were three, but Seb Myers, the chef-owner of the now-revered east London restaurant Planque, can.

Growing up in the small town of Geelong in South Eastern Australia, Seb watched his auntie cook at home. ‘Whenever she’d be in the kitchen, I’d be poking around, trying to help, asking as many questions as I could.’ On Sundays, he’d make churros with his Spanish grandmother or watch on as she roasted peppers in the hearth in her backyard.

Eventually, he knew his love for cooking would become more than a hobby. ‘I'm not really a sporty, competitive person, but in the kitchen it was different,’ he says. ‘I used to watch Iron Chef Japan when I was 10. I started cooking family dinners at 12. I’d make cakes and ice creams, and when I was supposed to go to uni, I chose to do an apprenticeship instead. I’m the only one in my family not to go to university. My parents are academics, and they really didn’t want me to get into cooking. Sometimes I wish I listened to them!’

Australia’s apprenticeship program for chefs is one of the best out there, combining paid kitchen training with structured coursework. For Seb, he studied for three years; eight to 12 weeks of the year were spent in classes and studying, while the rest of the year was spent working in restaurants. Once his apprenticeship was finished, he knew it was time to take cooking seriously. ‘I moved up to Melbourne and blagged my way into a fancy restaurant.’

It was there that Seb began to discover the intricacies of top-tier restaurants. ‘They dropped me in the deep end, and I had no idea what I was doing, but it was formative. I wanted to learn more, do better, be better, get faster.’

Eventually, Seb moved to the Middle East for a brief stint at a hotel before returning to Melbourne. With plans to move to Spain, he stopped off in London, where he met chef Nuno Mendes and spent a year working at his seminal restaurant Viajante. He then returned to Sydney to help a friend with an opening, but his time in Australia was short-lived. ‘Nuno called me up and came to visit, and he brought me back to London. I’ve been here ever since.’

At Viajante, Seb worked alongside people from all over the world – Germany, America, China and Switzerland to name a few. ‘It showed me this idea of taking influences from lots of different places and putting them through a different lens, refocusing them into something else.’

Eventually, Seb followed Nuno to the infamous Chiltern Firehouse, continuing to learn from him during some of the most iconic years of the celebrity-favourite restaurant. From there, he moved between restaurants and countries, taking on the role of head chef at Sager + Wilde, where he developed the menus, before hosting pop-ups around London and heading to Europe for freelance work, primarily in France. He eventually returned to London to prepare for a move to New York City, treating a residency at P. Franco as his last hurrah and a farewell to the UK. But when the pandemic hit, his plans to move to America fell through.

Despite the disappointment, it was at this time that he met his future business partner, Jonathan Alphandery, and the opportunity to help spearhead Planque emerged.

Seb met Jon through mutual friends, and over dinner one evening, Jon mentioned his plans to open a restaurant and asked whether Seb would be interested in helping him bring it to life. Having heard similar propositions plenty of times before, Seb thought little of it until Jon called him two days later. The pair went for a walk in the park, talked through the idea and refined the concept, with Seb eventually coming on board to lead the kitchen and develop Planque's culinary identity.

Housed in a former garage beneath the railway arches in Haggerston, Planque brings together Jon's passion for wine and Seb's approach to food. ‘Jon's been collecting wine for over 10 years. A big part of the restaurant is our wine cellar. We work really hard to keep it dynamic and reasonably priced for the level of wine that it is.’

Alongside the wine, classic French cooking is reinterpreted through Seb’s own experiences and influences. His classical training, time spent working in France and experience alongside chefs from around the world have given him a broad culinary perspective, allowing him to explore different ingredients and ideas while keeping French technique at the heart of his cooking. ‘There’s a way you can do minimalism in some of the dishes here, but there’s a lot of process and effort behind it,’ he says. ‘It’s about knowing where to put things, and where not to. We wanted to have as clear an identity as possible. It’s a gastronomy style that’s offering something a bit more refined but in a casual setting without the stuffiness of a fine dining restaurant.’

Now, over five years since opening, Planque has managed to retain something of an under-the-radar appeal. Describing it as a ‘semi-neighbourhood, semi-destination restaurant’, Seb has watched it attract increasing recognition, placing 11th in the 2026 National Restaurant Awards and second in SquareMeal's London Top 100. Despite the growing acclaim, his approach remains much the same. ‘The core DNA is the same. For me, a restaurant should be a work in progress. Each week we go in, and we just try and make things better. We make some mistakes and hopefully learn from them. That’s the nice thing about being a small independent restaurant; we get to make it as good as we can.’