Great British Menu 2023: the banquet recap
Great British Menu 2023 has finally reached its conclusion! Howard Middleton fills us in on how this year's course winners got on at this year's banquet.
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Great British Menu 2024It should have been Paddington’s party. A celebration of sixty-five years of happy, hapless entertainment. And then what happened? Gate-crashers! An unceremonious (and rather rowdy) banquet invasion by the Gruffalo, Radiohead, Desperate Dan and Dennis the Menace. Over the weeks, chefs honoured the legendary little bear’s adventures at sea, unearthing buried treasure, causing mayhem with Mr Curry’s gnomes and even celebrating Chinese New Year. All without success. Not a single Paddington dish made it officially onto the menu.
In the judging chamber, Tom Kerridge, Nisha Katona and Ed Gamble chanted their mantra of ‘link to brief’ – three little words that eventually sealed a chef’s fate. A strong ‘link to brief’ was sometimes let down by the cooking – underdone, overdone, and an ice cream that was ‘wombling free’ before it even reached their table. Other dishes were meticulously executed but swiftly severed for the lack of a ‘link to brief’.
So perfect balance became the name of the game and a wealth of high scores rewarded those who achieved it. Also in the interests of balance, Tom and Andi engaged in a semi-serious game of musical chairs, with Tom handing over his judging role for any dishes created by his employee Nick Beardshaw; the pair joyfully high-fiving as they passed in
in the corridor.
Joyful too is the atmosphere as banquet guests assemble in the gilded splendour of Brighton Pavilion – a venue that now seems a world away from the not so bright and very breezy alfresco banquet of just two years ago. Paddington may just be about to drown his sorrows at the bar when Will Lockwood comes to the rescue. As the highest scoring chef not to win a course, he’s been awarded the consolation prize of canapé and uses the opportunity to rework part of his main course into a Yorkshire parkin, chicken liver parfait and marmalade sandwich. ‘What a way to begin,’ says Karen Jankel, daughter of Paddington’s creator Michael Bond.
This year’s brief for a vegan starter proved to be a challenge for most chefs but Avi Shashidhara’s take on Indian street food is proving a popular choice. Channelling their inner Gruffalo, guests ‘scramble snakes’ of deep-fried powdered chickpea paste over pink beetroot, tomato, pomegranate, soy yoghurt, tamarind and mint chutneys and a crispy base of carom seed crackers. ‘Even better than I remember,’ admits Tom Kerridge.
‘An embarrassment of riches,’ was Andi’s assessment of the fish course contenders. Ed proposed a banquet devoted solely to fish and Nisha lamented the fact that she would not taste the treasure trove of delicious sauces again. In the end, Nick Beardshaw achieved a perfect score with his ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ tribute to Stanley Donwood’s artwork for the Radiohead album, and said he was literally ‘over the moon’. Banquet diners are moonstruck too, as they pour their Thai-style green sauce over the edible artwork film to reveal seared scallops, finger lime, compressed cucumber chunks and scallop roe.
On to the main course and it’s Tom Shepherd’s magnificent ‘Cow Pie’ that’s wowing everyone. Vegetarians get a tasty mushroom wellington but the rest tuck in to a hefty portion of beef cheek, onion and potato pie, juicy slices of sirloin, chunky glazed carrot and accompaniments of chive emulsion, mushroom ketchup and gravy. Guest judge for the course, Sir Lenny Henry declared, ‘When the cow pie came out, I literally started doing the cow pie song… and there isn’t one’.
Dessert, ‘the most magical course’ according to Andi, turned out to be just that in finals week. Those that were a little lacklustre and underwhelming in the heats were suddenly transformed. Everybody upped their game, resulting in three dishes that were tied on perfect scores – Nick’s, Tom’s and Adam Handling’s. In the end, Andi’s casting vote gave the course to Adam, who had taken second place in both fish and main courses. His ‘Food Fight’ – a meticulously chaotic mini party table of strawberry and grenadine jelly, long pepper set custard, sour strawberry marshmallow sorbet, burnt butter cake, black verjus gel, pop rocks, coffee syrup and meadowsweet cream is deemed to be ‘incredible’.
Having switched his pre-dessert to a post-dessert, Will returns with his homage to Wallace and Gromit – a ginger biscuit and Wensleydale ice cream sandwich that was a firm favourite with the judges and now gets a cracking response at the banquet. ‘Wallace would love it,’ says Aardman Animations co-founder Peter Lord.
Finally, as Andi announces Adam as the ultimate champion of champions, I’m sure I hear the sound of a crash, a thud and a trio of mild expletives. Who knows if that’s a certain little bear toppling off his bar stool after one too many consolatory marmalade martinis? What I do know is that I have three words of my own for Great British Menu – ‘missing you already’.
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