Tom Aikens was a no show. For eight weeks, Andi Oliver teased the chefs about which veteran chef could be theirs – ‘Angela Hartnett? Tom Aikens? Richard Corrigan?’. One by one, they appeared… except for Tom. The red-headed chef proved to be a red herring. Instead, after assisting Lisa Goodwin-Allen in week two, it was Niall Keating who made his first fully-fledged flight as a veteran. Behind closed doors, he confessed his excitement to Andi. In the heat of the kitchen, he played it inscrutably cool.
‘You don’t give much away, do you?’ observed Chris McClurg, chef de cuisine at Paul Ainsworth’s No 6 in Padstow. Fortunately for Chris, Niall was more effusive with his marks, which gave him a promising lead over his nearest rival, Gemma Austin, chef patron of new Belfast restaurant A Peculiar Tea.
At the other end of the scoreboard, cheerful Marty McAdam, chef patron of The Paget Lane in Enniskillen took his ‘Keating beating’ amicably. Stephen Hope, chef patron of Dawsons Restaurant in Castledawson, held on to cook his full menu, but sadly not for the judging chamber, where Tom Kerridge, Nisha Katona and Ed Gamble are joined by radio broadcaster and actor, Dev Griffin.
Tucking into canapés, there’s an Italian beer croustade of raw Orkney scallop, finger lime and caviar from Chris. Tom gets turbot tartare. Gemma’s canapé is crispy chicken skin with chicken liver mousse, black grapes and pickled beech mushrooms. Tom favours his turbot, but the others choose chicken. ‘I’d chase someone round a party to get another one of those,’ says Dev.
Gemma also appears to have created another crowd-pleaser with her hamper-packed, picnic-themed starter of toasties filled with Durrus Óg cheese, pulled oxtail and pickled fennel, spiced Scotch eggs, oxtail dipping sauce, fennel aioli, crispy pommes soufflés and a fennel and lemon Bellini cocktail. Nisha says the aioli is ‘phenomenal’ and Tom wants a thermos of the oxtail sauce. However, he soon adopts the ‘rain cloud at a picnic’ role when he calls for a reality check, questioning the practicality of serving this to a hundred people and keeping it warm. Ed tells him not to worry. ‘We’re the judges – we’ll get served first’.
Cleverly using a variety of ingredients with royal warrants, Chris’s ‘Royal Variety Performance’ starter consists of a fricassee of trompettes, winter chanterelles and maitake, with truffle butter, discs of pickled kohlrabi, creamy polenta and fried cloud mushrooms. It’s served (beautifully on bespoke tableware) with a pot of smoky onion tea and a cheese and onion soda scone. Divided over the pronunciation of ‘scon’ or ‘scoan’, the judges are united in appreciation of its ‘punchy’ flavour. ‘Almost offensively good’ declares Tom. ‘Exactly the sort of thing that wouldn’t go down well at the Royal Variety’ adds Ed, perhaps reflecting on his own performance there.