Yahoo News I want exactly what you made on TV, diners tell celebrity chefs
They say cooking is the new rock and roll. Well, if that’s the case some of its biggest stars are getting fed up with churning out their old hits.
Chefs are complaining that diners would rather be served the dishes that made them famous on television cookery programmes than their latest innovations.
With the explosion of cookery programmes on TV customers regularly demand a celebrity chef’s menu includes a dish they have seen on screen, in some cases travelling hundreds of miles to eat that particular one.
And if they don’t see it on the menu there is hell to pay.
In Glynn Purnell’s case it’s the burnt English custard surprise which he created for BBC Two’s Great British Menu in 2008, which diners insist on having.
The Michelin-starred chef took the dish - an egg shell filled with creme brulee and served with marinated strawberries and honeycomb - off the menu at his Birmingham restaurant eight months after it featured on the show.
“It was the only thing anyone was interested in. It was dragging me down,” Purnell told The Sunday Telegraph. “People were booking with us just for that dish. I’d had enough, also because it’s a huge amount of work to prepare that dish and I took it off the menu.”
So when a woman arrived one evening, having driven 200 miles from Scotland especially to try the burnt egg surprise, she was not best pleased.
“She looked at the menu, couldn’t see it and demanded to see the manager. She wasn't going to leave until she’d been served the dish she came to eat.”
Purnell relented and prepared it for her on the spot, despite having to cope with preparing a full menu for his busy restaurant, near Birmingham’s St Philip’s Cathedral.
“A little bit inside me said ‘You’ve sold this woman the dish on national television and she came all this way to try it.’ So I served it to her and when she ate it I’ve never seen someone as happy in their life,” he said. “That’s when I realised the significance of something I’ve created to so many people.”
Purnell now serves the dish, along with his other signature Great British Menu hits; haddock, egg and cornflake and monkfish masala.
He is not the only chef to regard some of their creations as millstones round their necks.
Richard Bainbridge is planning to take his Nanny Bush’s Trifle - a dish inspired by his grandmother which he created from the Great British Menu in 2015 - off the menu at his Norwich restaurant, Benedict’s, because of its reliance on year-round supply of strawberries and raspberries.
“That’s something we’re going to change because it does not fit with the ethos of the restaurant. We’re going to start using fruit that’s appropriate to the time of year,” he told Restaurant magazine.
Purnell compares the phenomenon to rock and pop fans who flock to concerts to hear a band’s hit singles and are disappointed when the act insist on playing their new material.
“I went to see Elton John a few years ago and he played Rocket Man and it was phenomenal. When chefs are lucky enough to strike gold they need to embrace it. These dishes are my greatest hits and I’ll carry on playing them until people stop listening.”
