Displaying posts tagged with 'oliver peyton'

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.