133. Great British Menu 2021.

 

 

 The BBC series, Great British Menu, which, though I frequently moan about it, is unmissable for me returns to television screens on 24 March 2021. As we might expect from previous experience, the Central region (the great swathe of the West and East Midlands plus East Anglia) is poorly represented both by the number of competing chefs chosen to appear in the series and by the Central region’s restaurants showcased. Thus the chefs of only two West Midlands restaurants are to appear in the series while the other two featured in the Central heats actually work in London restaurants. I suppose the West Midlands has done well to have two of its restaurants highlighted given that BBC luvvies seem so unwilling to make programmes here (even Peaky Blinders is made improbably in Manchester which must be a pain to the dears who work for the BBC given that the city is, certainly to extrapolate from its Michelin star ratings, a virtual gastronomic desert).

 

  The competing chefs in the Central region heats will be Sabrina Gidda, who qualifies by having been brought up in Wolverhampton but who actually works at The AllBright in London (this will be her third attempt), Shannon Johnson who was brought up in Lincolnshire but who also works in London at Hicce, Stuart Collins who opened Docket No. 33 in Whitchurch in Shropshire in 2017 where he is Chef Patron and Liam Dillon from Lichfield where he has been chef owner of the Boat Inn since 2017.

  Meanwhile the series returns largely unchanged except that it has ditched the irritating comedienne, Susan Calman, as presenter, a role which Andi Oliver takes over after making a fair fist of doing the job in the 2020 Christmas series. Meanwhile Rachel Khoo replaces Andi Oliver as the third judge while Waldorf and Statler otherwise known as Matthew Fort and Oliver Peyton continue their pleasingly eternal roles as judges dating back to time immemorial. Wikipedia describes Khoo as “a British cook, writer and broadcaster, with her own BBC and Food Network television cooking series”. So that’s alright then.

  The theme of this year’s series will be ‘British innovation’ and commemorates the 30th anniversary of Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s making the worldwide web available to the general public. Pre-programme publicity predicts that we will see more than our fair share of all that is grim in modern gastronomy - numerous instances of molecular gastronomy and more than enough dishes cooked sous vide. Our Lichfield chef, Liam Dillon is said to be preparing a dish recalling Dr Johnson, a resident of the city and father of the English dictionary, so one hopes than Dr Johnson will not be forced whist sitting at his dining table in Paradise to express to his companion, Mr Boswell, an honest opinion after being served a dish cooked sous vide, which after all isn’t even English and really should have by now been fully parked up (with wheels clamped) the gastronomic cul de sac it represents.

  Still, the theme of innovation is an interesting one and so let us hope that the dishes which pop up in the 8 weeks of programmes point to a sane and interesting future for our restaurants.

The Boat Inn - 

Docket No. 33 -