Blog posts in Interviews

It is the final round of Great British Menu heats this week, and with three top chefs from the South West region taking part it promises to be a great week.

We spoke to Nathan Outlaw ahead of the the competition to find out how he got on with this year’s brief, twitter and his restaurants.

How did you find the Great British Menu brief this year?

For me was all about the Olympic spirit – the spirit and determination to do well. What I did in the competition wasn’t necessarily any different to what I do day in day out – I do what I do to the best of my ability, and I’m always looking to improve. Obviously the dishes were created for GBM, but I didn’t change my style or anything. I think maybe that is where some of the chefs have gone wrong this year and gone a bit more for Olympic rings and torches and all that sort of stuff; it is nice but I don’t really think that’s what the show was aiming for. I thought the brief was quite a good challenge.

How was it competing with Paul and Simon?

Paul’s restaurant  is literally across the water from mine, and Simon’s is in the next county – so I know both of them very well. We also know what each others strengths and weaknesses are so that made it a bit more interesting. Simon and I have come across each other in other competitions in the past too – so we both know the other can cook!

I understand that when you went to start out in the industry, your Dad, a chef warned you off it – is that advice you would pass on today?

I’d tell people to give it a go for six months. but my biggest piece of advice would be if you are not enjoying it then definitely don’t do it, because cooking is one of those jobs which at the top level will consume your life. You live it and you’ve got no personal life – I’m living proof of that, I have two children and a wife who barely see me, I spend more time with my chefs than I do with them. From some peoples point of view that’s quite a sad thing, but it is the life they’ve always known and if my kids come to me and say “Dad, I want to be a chef” then I personally would say you need to give it a go before making that decision – it is not an easy one.

I’ve got a lot of young chefs in my kitchens, boys and girls of about 20 and we try encourage them but don’t tiptoe around them either – because you don’t want to portray the industry as being anything other what it is. We do endeavour to make things better and improve conditions. At the end of the day if you want to produce food and you want to have a restaurant at the top if its game, then there’s only one way to do that and that is through hard work – there is no short cut, that is for sure.

Things are improving then?

I definitely don’t think we can get away with the antics that some of the chefs that I worked under got away with, the way they treated people. I think a lot of the conditions weren’t that great and a lot of us have taken that on-board and instead of replicating that way of running a kitchen we’ve made it a much nicer place to work. Most of the chefs I know at the higher end have boys and girls in their kitchens who have been with them for a long time, that tells you something. If you look back at the early days with chefs like Marco and Gordon Ramsay you would see chefs just leaving and walking out day in day out – nowadays there are very loyal crews in most kitchens which speaks volumes for the improvements in the industry.

You are quite active on Twitter – do you find it a useful tool?

Yeah, for us, so far twitter has been very useful. I try to keep it business like because at the end of the day everyone can see it. I try to put the sorts of things people who would come to the restaurant would like to see but wouldn’t normally… So if there’s some lovely fish that comes in, or one of the chefs has made a nice staff tea – just the little quirky things.

It works well with the book (British Seafood) having come out recently too – we’ve already had people on there saying they’ve tried the recipes.

It must be great to get that feedback, where as perhaps people might not have bothered to write or phone.

Yes, it’s really nice to hear from people that perhaps wouldn’t even come to the restaurant but have bought the book and had a go. Even little things like when I’m on Saturday Kitchen and people say “your omelette was nice today” or “I loved the look of the dish you made” that kind of thing – that person couldn’t have got the message to you before.

It also seems to be a good community for chefs.

There are loads of us on there, I think in the past a lot of chefs wouldn’t have shared their recipes or ideas – but what you are seeing now is chefs sharing and being very open – so from that aspect it’s really good as well.

Tell us a bit about the restaurants – how do they differ?

The Seafood and Grill is four years old, and basically the idea for the restaurant came from the hotel where both the restaurants are – they wanted good food in a casual environment. The clientèle who come to this area of Cornwall are discerning and want quality – so what I set out to do was to start with lovely pieces of fish from the market, and meat from the local butchers and farmers. We give them lots of variety, so customers can choose their own sauces and dressings, the way they’d like it cooked and which side orders they’d like – so really they’re making their own dishes. Because of where we are, we can confidently put tronçon of turbot, whole lobster, and things like that on the menu and people are happy to pay for them as they know they will be fed well, have good wine and be in a relaxing environment – it’s very “Cornwall”!

Then there is the fine dining restaurant – that is where I cook, and if I’m not here it’s not open. There are ten tables, a maximum of twenty covers and just myself, my head chef Chris and a couple of apprentices in the kitchen. We cook one daily changing, nine course fish menu. We basically get everything from four or five fishermen – one who just supplies crab and lobster, one that runs an oyster farm and a couple of day boaters. I just make the menu up from what they have and the produce we get from a few small growers. We do take into account any dietary requirements and stuff like that, but other than that we cook for you and people seem to love that “no choice” element to it. At the moment, we’re booked up until October so it is going really well.

So there’s one restaurant with lots of choice and one where you come in for me to cook for you – but both championing seafood more than anything else.

So finally, where else is good to eat?

In this area there is Number Six – Paul Ainsworth’s restaurant which I think is very good and his other, Rojanos which is great for kids and Rick’s Stein’s establishments too. There are a couple of less known ones too – Fresh From The Sea in Port Isaac – owned by my crab and lobster fisherman. In there you’re going to get half lobster and crab sandwiches and that’s pretty much it, half a lobster and a glass of wine for £12.50 but they’re really good. Also in Port Isaac is The Harbour Restaurant – simple fresh food. There’s Chris Eden down at The Driftwood – he’s a very, very good chef, and Porthminster Beach Cafe down in St. Ives. There’s The Beach Hut and the Brasserie at the Watergate Bay Hotel which are both good and there’s Fifteen there too. We’re very lucky down here.

Marcus Wareing returns as a judge and mentor for the North West heat of the Great British Menu (details here). We spoke to him about the show, his own restaurants and his tips for young chefs hoping to open their own restaurants.

Marcus Wareing with Simon Rogan on Great British Menu

What do you think of Great British Menu this year?

The brief this year is very interesting. Every year for the last six series there have been very clear guidelines and objectives for the chefs. For example one year you had to go and source all the ingredients from a particular country estate. This year, being about the Olympics, the makers have said it is about being the best, about pushing the boundaries and pushing yourself as a person. So it is like saying to the chefs “do whatever you like with no guidelines” – they’ve opened the floodgates for chefs to do a lot of very interesting things and to push boundaries by using some very interesting techniques and skills, but I also think you’ll see some disasters along the way. It is really sorting the men from the boys, it’s a really clever, interesting way of doing it.

It is a once in a lifetime opportunity for the four chefs that get through. The Olympics are not going to come to London again in our lifetime, it is the only chance the athletes will get to do this in their own country and it is the same for the chefs.

It is probably both one of the toughest challenges and one of the best banquets they could ever cook for.

At the end of Series 1, You cooked for the Queen at her 80th Birthday – how was that?

That’ll take some beating. Again it’s a one off, it was very special. I was so privileged to be part of that.

Marcus Wareing with Johnnie Mountain on Great British Menu

Do you think the Great British Menu is an indicator of where the industry is right now?

I think it is. I think there are a lot of TV shows that are good indicators of where cookery is in this country. Even amateurs are pushing boundaries beyond the norm in some of the other shows. I think Great British Menu reflects the way chefs are pushing themselves and the lack of boundaries they have around them now.

It also demonstrates the scenario we are all in where Twitter, Facebook and blogging are putting your creations out there on the web instantly.

In that respect, it must be a very different world these days.

I remember when chefs used to put menus out – not that many years ago – and it would takes weeks or months before anybody discovered anything; or a new style of cooking would take years to become popular even though a cook had been doing it ages. I think with instant access to this information it puts a huge amount of pressure on us as chefs to perform.

It used to be that when somebody had a bad meal in a restaurant they’d tell four of five of their friends who would tell their families – they would maybe reach 20 people. Now, people can put “sat in this restaurant having a bad time, good not great…” on their Twitter account and be reaching a few hundred or thousand people depending on how many followers they have within seconds. It has never been like that before, and it is scary.

What advice would you give to somebody wanting to open their own restaurant?

Don’t open a restaurant just yet!

My advice to young chefs is don’t open a restaurant until you are 100% ready for a life changing experience – in more ways than one. If you are not ready, then you will fail – there is no doubt about that.

If are under pressure from not being creative enough, if you are under pressure because nobody works for you, if you are under pressure because your wife doesn’t like you working too many hours, if you are under pressure because you can’t buy great plates or better produce – if you can’t take pressure full stop, don’t do it.

Never jump into it. You have to be realistic and say “this is where I am today, this is where I am going and this is how big the gap is in between those two things”. Listen to the people with experience, listen to the people who have made it and the people you have met along the way. Don’t go and work for somebody who doesn’t inspire you or who is never in their own kitchen – work in the places that are going to count towards your education and absorb everything that they have to offer. When you want to move on, don’t just walk out of the door – speak to them and ask them where they think it is best for you to go. You are going to have to work 18 hours a day, give or six days a week.

You are going to have to work for fifteen years before you get your stars and your stripes – it is a marathon not a 100 metre sprint. I trained for years, I was 25 when I opened my first kitchen as Head Chef with my partner Gordon [Ramsay]. In this world right now, a 25 year old opening a kitchen? I’d give him less than 18 months in this economy. Money is tight and people are looking for bargains, staff are looking for more money and less hours – it’s a serious job. Without experience you are going to be in a very dangerous position.

Do you think it is often the lack of business experience that lets people down?

That’s the funny thing, a chef that has no business experience is a chef that will never really own his business… that is a chef who will have a business man, accountant or somebody else behind the scenes pulling the strings. If you don’t have access to the bank account, you are not the owner!

Tell us a bit about your restaurants.

Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley has been my creation ever since I have been a head chef, from L’Oranger through opening that to opening and owning part of Petrus for ten years to now, on my own at Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley – it is the combination of my whole career. The cuisine is food of the moment – incredibly seasonal. It is very modern in the style in which we cook and the way the food is dressed. There are elements of French classical cooking in the methods, but I believe that is true of most styles of cooking.

The Gilbert Scott is very much a relaxed environment. It is comfort food – the food we all enjoy. It is a big menu – bold, brash, seasonal dishes, very British with some great ideas from the past brought into our modern world.

Channel 5 series The Restaurant Inspector returns tonight for a second series with Fernando Peire, director at London’s iconic The Ivy restaurant, visiting six ailing restaurants and offering them advice to help turn their businesses around.

Restaurants featuring in this year’s show include Piccadilly Spice (formerly The Maharaja Tandoori) in Soho, Iggs in Edinburgh, Zanzibar Restaurant in Sheffield (previously known as UK Mama) and The Black Lion Inn in Halland, near Lewes (previously known as Tarragon).

We spoke to Fernando ahead of the show:

With the current economic climate, do you think diners are becoming more discerning?

I think that many people are being more careful with their money but not everyone. There are still some big spenders out there, especially in London. I do think that people are more and more discerning about service, however, and expect to be treated well and served with a smile by people who know what they are doing. Good hospitality and service is what sets restaurants apart.

What are the most common problems you find with restaurants?

Owners who are out of touch with the marketplace and too ego-driven; prices too high; menus too long; a lack of thought in the layout and style of the place; owners lacking in self-awareness and empathy.

What would be your advice be to anyone starting out in the restaurant business today?

Only invest your own money if you have had the experience of making money for someone else. Then apply the same rules. Investigate your market and look at the competition before you decide what to do. Try to look at your offer from the perspective of potential customers. Listen to your customers and get to know them. Employ only staff who enjoy making other people happy.

First impressions count – what would make you walk away from a restaurant without even going through the door?

If the place looks dirty, if there is someone standing outside trying to drag you in, any mention in the window of awards, if I look through the window and see a napkin on a table in the shape of a dying swan, any mention of “foam” on the menu… So many things!

Where is good to eat right now?

I like simple places with tasty food. Old favourites:

Yalla Yalla for Lebanese mid-afternoon, 500 for Italian on a Sunday, Busaba Eathai for Thai-Asian any time; Joe Allen for after-theatre burger and burgundy; Centre Point Sushi for raw fish lunch; Cote for Steak & Chips before theatre; the Riding House Cafe for breakfast; and The Running Footman for a cheap Mayfair lunch.

Belfast chef Chris Fearon has been Head Chef at Deanes at Queens for four years. This year he’s making his second appearance on BBC2’s Great British Menu.

Your starter “season, shake and curry on” made it on to the banquet menu last year. How did that affect the restaurant – did it bring lots of people in?

Business after Great British Menu was shown on TV last year was very good – if we were on the mainland in Great Britain it would probably have been even better but I think being on an island across the water we loose out on it a bit. We did a couple of theme nights too and got lots of interest from the local media. We had a lot of people coming in and asking for the starter, one couple from New Zealand were in Belfast visiting relatives – they said it is a massive program over there. We had a huge banner across the front of the restaurant saying “Winner – Great British Menu” and all the props from the starter on a shelf in the middle of the restaurant. They were a bit upset because the show is delayed by a bit when it’s shown out there and they didn’t want to know who won the starter!

So how was the show this year?

It was a bigger challenge this year. They asked us to push boundaries and try things we have never done before and to make food that would wow people. I took from the brief that I should push myself to break boundaries in my own style of cooking, so I started from a blank canvas and said “where can I push myself”. I tried to do a bit of molecular – stuff I don’t do on a day to day, I do a couple of hundred covers every day and it just doesn’t suit. So I dabbled in a bit of that, and I also practised a more refined style of presentation – tried to make it as fancy as I possibly could. For last year’s brief, the street party thing, I went for a theatrical style of presentation with lots of props and gimmicks – a lot of fun factor… I wanted it to be the same this year and to stay close to my style of food – so there’s lots of crazy props again. I’ve very much stuck to the whole Olympic theme, in terms of the names of my dishes – so my stater was called “Clay pigeon shoot” and uses real clay pigeons and a plate made out of shotgun cartridges. I wanted to have the wow-factor.

It was a lot tougher than last year, but a lot more fun in the kitchen and a lot more banter in the kitchen than last year. Chris Bell was there last year and he is back along with Niall McKenna. Belfast is a small place so we all know each other anyway, and we get on well. People tell me the Northern Ireland heat was very funny to watch so I’m looking forward to it.

There does seem to be a real sense of camaraderie in the kitchen, and honesty when it comes to tasting each other’s dishes.

It is very much a team thing; people only get to see 30 minutes of what was a 12 or 14 hour day. You are in the kitchen all day long, you share a car back to the same hotel together of an evening and so you do tend to bond very quickly. It gets to the point where you forget the “I want to beat him” and it is very much “let’s all do our best and try and get the plate of food up on the pass at the right time”. If somebody needs a hand we help him out; you see it in the other heats too and that’s nice – it is nice to have that.

Tell us a little about Deanes at Queens.

We’re an upmarket brasserie in the university area serving big numbers both at lunch and dinner. The food is honest, rustic and modern – it’s big flavours and big happy portions. There is quite a big menu, about eight starters, twelve mains and five dessert – and we do Sunday lunches too. There’s a south facing terrace at the front that is always nice and sunny.

Finally, where else is good to eat in and around Belfast?

I’m a big fan of The Barking Dog which is a little pub/brasserie – it has astroturf at the front of it with picnic tables, very quirky. It’s a cool pub and good food. There is The Old School House in Comber, just outside Belfast that has only been open for a couple of weeks. It’s a guy that worked with Phil Howard at The Square and Marco Pierre White. He’s cooking for about 30 covers per night; he’s doing really good high end food.  There’s also a chain called Mourne Seafood; they just do local seafood. They’re very good; they keep it simple and very fresh and it’s cheap. Quite rustic. It’s nothing fancy.

Full details of the Northern Ireland heats of Great British Menu are here.

Stephanie Moon is consultant chef working with producers and restaurants including Rudding Park in Harrogate, she also tutors at Leeds College and presents at numerous food festivals across the country. We spoke to her about her second appearance on Great British menu, foraging and Yorkshire food.

How was it taking part in The Great British Menu this year?

The calibre of chefs that are in the competition this year is amazing and it is an honour to be on that list. There are some weird, wonderful ways of cooking and some very different ingredients this year.

I think this year’s brief has been very tough. It’s difficult when you do something like Great British Menu – it is about how you read the brief and how other people read it. It is something you do on your own, and although you ask other people’s advice it is very much your own opinion. It is a big thing to do. I do take a few wacky twists and turns and tonight’s main course is very much like that!

There are three very different styles of cooking and interpretations of the brief this week.

Yes, Colin’s food is very molecular – precise and controlled. His fish course was my favourite dish of his, I thought it was stunning and I’m surprised he didn’t get a 10 for it, it looked so elegant. Charlie is more bold with his flavours, his monkfish with beetroot was a very nice dish too.

Your starter was certainly unusual, what gave you the idea of making goats cheese in 90 minutes?

They asked us to push boundaries and do things that have never been done before, and I thought it would be a good idea to try making a fresh cheese in the hour and a half. I think it’s something different and it is also something close to my heart – I’m a farmers daughter and the farm I visited to do the filming is 7-8 miles from where my parents live. I’ve used their cheese and milk before, they also make something called a crowdie [a soft, spreadable goats cheese] which is wonderful stuff.

You are a big fan of Yorkshire produce in general aren’t you?

Yes definitely and I’ve used it in all this year’s dishes for Great British Menu – Yorkshire food makes up the main bulk of my menu.

Yorkshire is a real garden of food for chefs, we’re amazingly lucky. We’ve got fish over at Whitby, game from the Moors then in the Dales there is fantastic Lamb and beef. Then over in East Yorkshire there is lots of arable farming, things like rapeseed oil – there are so many different people producing that now and it is a great product. Then there’s all the milled flours and fantastic beer. There are more microbreweries in in Yorkshire than in any other county – I’m using stout from Ilkley Brewery in my main course and something called Boozy Infusion from a restaurant called Beatson House in my dessert – that’s a different product, a really unique thing!

There are a lot of foraged ingredients on this year’s show – perhaps a reflection of the trend in the UK, but you’ve been doing it for a while haven’t you?

At Rudding Park we do a lot of foraging and we’ve been blogging about foraging for 4-5 years now. The blog is getting lots of visitors at the moment which is really good because it means there is interest there and people want to know about these things.

Is there a really simple recipe using foraged ingredients you could recommend for people looking to dip their toe in the water?

There is, a really food one to get people started is wild garlic soup; wild garlic is absolutely around and about at the moment – it’s everywhere. I think for people who haven’t done any foraging before it’s a good one. Wild garlic is easy to find, it tends to grow in woodlands and near to streams or rivers and all you need to do is rub a leaf and you know you’re on to the right thing. Also, there is so much of it about you aren’t going to cause a problem by taking a few handfuls.

Where is good to eat in Yorkshire at the moment?

The Pipe and Glass in South Dalton is fantastic, James McKenzie is doing a fantastic job. I’m looking forward to a new place opening, Iris in Wakefield, that’s going to be interesting – the chef Liam Duffy used to work with Steve Smith at the Devonshire Arms and for Aiden Byrne so I think he’s going to be one to watch. I also ate at The Black Swan at Oldstead recently, that was a fantastic meal. There are lots of places in and around Yorkshire.

Full details of the North East heats of Great British Menu are here.

Mark Greenaway is making his first appearance on BBC2’s Great British Menu in this weeks Scotland heats. We spoke to him ahead of this weeks show about the competition, his own award-winning restaurant and where else is good to eat in Edinburgh.

So, how was Great British Menu? We’re hearing this years is even better than last year.

Yes, I think this year’s series is going to be amazing.

I think this year’s brief suits a lot of the chefs better because we aren’t being squeezed into doing something so far outside our comfort zones. It is back to restaurant food, and every one of the chefs taking part is a restaurant chef. This is a real chance to fly the flag for what we do.

The brief of pushing boundaries and being innovative – it’s what we all do anyway, perhaps some to a lesser extremes than others, but at the end of the day we all push ourselves and we all push our food regardless of style.

You took a lot of ingredients you used in the Great British Menu kitchen with you from Scotland, why was that?

When you devise your menu you devise it with what’s in season when the show goes to air. I know all my suppliers and I know how good they are and the quality of the stuff I can get I really didn’t want to take a chance of getting there and ending up with something I wasn’t 100% happy with. Also, the boys that I’m up against are based in that neck of the woods and I didn’t know what they were going to cook or where they were going to get their ingredients from – so you’ve got to do the best you can do because you believe that they’ll do the same – and if having a great bit of produce is the key, then good!

Your restaurant (Mark Greenaway at No. 12 Picardy Place) has only been open for just over a year, but you’ve already picked up a number of awards. Tell us a bit about your restaurant, what is the style of cooking?

The style of cooking is very modern and produce lead. We use some very old techniques on the same plate as some very new ones. For example, we might do a beef dish of a roasted sirloin, with duck fat confit potatoes, and braised short rib – so you’ve got sous-vide then roasted sirloin which is very modern and then you’ve got the braised beef which is an old classic technique with the duck fat confit potatoes which isn’t very new either – it’s all about how it is brought together.

As for being produce lead, everybody bangs on about food miles and how they only use seasonal produce. At the moment, we have a lot of rhubarb on the menu – that rhubarb comes from Yorkshire. Are we using local produce? I think we are – we use the best of British ingredients, so if the asparagus that comes from down south is better than the one that comes from Fife up here in Scotland – I’ll buy it from down south. To me that is still local – it’s not like flying it in from Peru in the middle of December – that is something I would not do.

The great thing about Edinburgh and the restaurant that we’ve opened is that we’re not in competition with anyone here and nobody in Edinburgh is in competition with us. All of the – for want of a better expression – fine dining restaurants, are so different in style. Tom Kitchin for example has his from nature to plate approach – very rustic, it’s great flavours but very simple cooking, whereas Martin Wishart is the total opposite end of the spectrum to Tom – very French, very classical, very precise. Which is great because it means there is so much choice for the customer.

So where else is good to eat in Edinburgh?

There are loads. There are six Michelin starred restaurants in Edinburgh in total – that’s the biggest concentration outside London. There is an new restaurant opened up at a place called Stockbridge called Purslane – it’s very small, just 20 covers, but Paul Gunning the head chef there is doing great food. There’s Wedgewood on the Royal Mile, Paul Wedgewood’s place – again great food. Then you’ve got Tom Kitchin’s place, Martin Wishart, Plumed Horse, Number 1 at The Balmoral, Angels with Bagpipes – there are loads. There are some great Asian restaurants too. You’d be very hard pushed to go out in Edinburgh and have a bad meal to be honest, you really would.

We look at restaurants around the country and the same seems to be true in a lot of places; do you think the restaurant industry as a whole is improving in Scotland and the rest of the UK?

I think because of the financial climate that we’re in the people that aren’t quite up to the grade fade away, they don’t last. The ones that dodge the bills – or the general cowboys, just like with that kind of plumber or electrician, those people don’t get the business because the work that is out there is so slack as it is.

In the restaurant scene if you aren’t giving your customers something that they want to go back for, they won’t come back and it won’t last – so everyone is just trying that little bit harder to get the food offering right, the pricing right and the service right for the level that they are pitching themselves at. I’m the first one to go out for a £5 burger, because I know exactly what I’m going to get… but if I go out for the same burger and somebody tries to charge me £12.50, I’ll be asking myself “why – that is a £5 burger”. It is the same at any level, people come in with an expectation of what they should be getting when they walk through the door and if you don’t deliver that then you are dealing with a complaint, or the very British thing to do is not to complain and not come back. So I think everyone is just getting a little bit smarter about their business now, which is great for the industry.

The Great British Menu is on BBC2 at 19:30 each weekday starting on Monday 9th April. Details of the Scottish heat are here.

The Great British Menu returns for its seventh series, “The Olympic Feast” next week. The series will follow the same format as last year with three chefs from each region competing weekly to get their starter, fish course, main course or dessert selected to appear on the menu at an end of series banquet.

We spoke to judge Oliver Peyton to find out a little more about this years competition.

What do you think makes the Great British menu such a popular show?

What is brilliant about Great British Menu is that it is not about chefs who used to be on TV, chefs cooking Turbot in a classical way or terrines of foie gras; we are so far away from that.

It brings a lot of things to the fore – restaurants, chefs, suppliers, customers – and it all sort of gels. I think this competition has really helped define British cooking and a new generation of chefs.

How do you think this year’s show compares to last year?

I think it’s getting better and better. This year in particular I really felt that the chefs had lost the shackles of foreign influence. Genuinely for the first time I felt a sense of true independent thinking from the chefs in the competition. I think that it is a big turning point in British cookery because it means we can say there is now a modern indigenous cooking culture in the country which I didn’t see in previous competitions.

Something else that is really prevalent is healthy gastronomy – that is to say food that is not just based on butter and cream, or heavy eating. You can eat the food in this year’s competition without feeling you need to bring along your donor card.

Also, the type of ingredients chefs are choosing this year are perhaps not the kind of ingredients you’d expect to see – they are choosing the right ingredients rather than just choosing them because of the expense.

Do you think the show is representative of restaurants in the UK at the moment?

It is the tip of the iceberg. I feel over the next few years we have chefs in their early 20’s coming through and you are going to see a whole plethora of very interesting restaurants opening up. We’re the most creative country in the world – and when that translates in to food that’s great.

There is a generation of people becoming chefs who are doing it because they feel a genuine need and urge to be a chef – to express themselves through their cooking.

I think you have to go an awful long way to eat better than you do in Britain now, and I think that’s why this year’s show has been so great.

Some of last years chefs seemed to struggle a bit with the brief, did the looser brief this year help?

I got really excited by the sense of freedom I was getting from the chefs. For example, Phil Howard’s cooking in this competition – Philip you would describe as one of the old masters of classical British cooking in this country, and in this show you get a real sense of freedom from him. He was invigorated by working with the younger chefs, as if he’d thought “hang on I might have to get out of bed to win this”. I’m being facetious – but he did get out of bed and the results were amazing.

Do any dishes from last years show still stick in your mind?

Yes they do – but I’m not going to tell you which ones… But there are three dishes in this years competition which were moments in time where I thought ‘wow’ – those dishes were close to religious experiences.