Rounding off the heats with chefs from the South West, it’s been a dramatic week in the GBM kitchen; full of surprises, knife-edge decisions and shocks… not least of which being the unexpectedly funky eyewear choice of a certain veteran chef.
Newcomers Nat Tallents from The Box in Plymouth and Elly Wentworth from The Angel in Dartmouth tied after the first two courses and, incredibly, also tied on the usual deciding factor – the canapé, requiring veteran Angela Hartnett to make a tricky choice, sending Nat home. Then Angela faced another dilemma as a restaurant crisis forced her home too, leaving Richard Corrigan to step-in in inimitably ebullient style (complete with bright green reading glasses).
Elly clung on to complete her menu and, despite a winning pre-dessert and full marks for her pudding, she missed out on her chance in the judging chamber by just one point. Elly bore her defeat with grace, having already endured Andi’s shadiest comment of the series, which came in the form of a critique of her main course. ‘You really might want to rethink your relationship with the water bath,’ she warned.
So, competing for a record fourth time, Jude Kereama from Porthleven’s Kota and Kota Kai is up against another fresh face to the competition, Nick Beardshaw from Kerridge’s Bar and Grill in London.
Joining judges Oliver, Rachel and Matthew is inventor Colin Furze, who, deciding to leave his ‘mad cap’ in the shed, brings along a toast-a-pult instead. After failing to catch the soaring slice, Matthew picks himself up off the floor to regain his composure for canapés.
Jude’s canapé combines cauliflower, scallop, apple and caviar, whilst Nick’s is a rarebit-style tartlet of Montgomery’s Cheddar. ‘Absolutely delicious’ says Oliver of Jude’s and Colin agrees ‘that’s a win for me’. Rachel adds ‘we’re looking for excitement and innovation… and I’m not that excited by a little cheese tartlet’. Well, in the excitement stakes, I suppose it never expected to be following a toast-a-pult.
Inspired by a Cornish company researching the healing powers of food, Jude starts with a dish quite literally revolving around tomatoes. He serves flasks of centrifuged tomato consommé with pipettes of basil and spring onion oil to accompany his salad of Cornish crab, cherry tomatoes, crispy shallots and avocado puree. Rachel judges it to be ‘a fantastic way to start a meal’ but Matthew curiously questions if the dish really needs tomatoes. Everyone else ignores him and he’s forced to conclude, ‘if only all medicine could taste like this, what a much better world this would be’.