L'Atelier is run by Jean-Claude Juston.

Born and educated in France, Jean-Claude Juston subsequently moved to the UK where he underwent further training in whole food cookery and worked for a time as a specialist baker at the celebrated Neal´s Yard Bakery in Covent Garden, London. He also studied organic methods and was partner in an organic farm in Britain and subsequently Head Chef and Organic Gardener at the Le Plan Healing Centre in his native France.

In 1985, he set up in London the Angel Gate Restaurant on the principles of Rudolf Steiner, which later won the Time Out Award for Best Vegetarian Restaurant in London. In 1985 and 1986 he provided specialist whole food catering as chef at the Hackney Kids Collective in London, gaining awards for Best Food in Hackney in both years. In 1986 he became manager of the well known Millwards Vegetarian Restaurant which received the City Limits award for Best Vegetarian Restaurant in London that year.

He then moved on to become Head Chef and shortly afterwards Manager of the 200-seat vegan and vegetarian restaurant at the prestigious London School of Economics (part of the University of London) which attracted customers from all over Britain as his reputation for providing cheap, healthy and delicious food was made known by word of mouth and through highly complimentary press articles.

In 1994 he decided to leave the centre of one of the biggest cities in the world to move to a tiny village of a dozen or so souls in the Alpujarras mountains of Southern Spain in the Sierra Nevada national park, close to the fabled city of Granada and the coast of Andalucia. At l'Atelier, a 350-year-old traditional Berber house built set into the mountainside, he runs cookery courses for professionals and lay people alike and accepts a limited number of visitors as paying guests at exceptionally reasonable rates.