Displaying posts tagged with 'belfast'

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.