Twenty years. That’s how many years the Great British Menu has been testing Britain’s best chefs to their limits. Not too shabby for a show that began as a one-off celebration of the Queen’s 80th birthday.
Most cooking competitions hand out cash prizes or shiny trophies, but not GBM. GBM gives something even more difficult to come by: the opportunity to cook one course at a prestigious banquet. One dish. That’s it. And chefs fight tooth and nail for that honour.
How It All Started
April 2006. BBC Two kicked off a cooking show with a straightforward concept. Take the finest chefs from different regions. Make them compete. The winner gets to cook for the queen.
Jennie Bond hosted those initial episodes. The ex-royal correspondent was the best choice, given the whole Queen’s birthday angle. Seven regions entered. Two chefs from each area battled it out over five days. From Monday to Thursday, the chefs spent their time cooking their courses. Friday, they served the entire menu to three judges.
That first judging table was made up of Matthew Fort, Oliver Peyton, and Prue Leith. They’d stay there for years. Fort had worked as The Guardian’s food editor. Peyton owned restaurants across London. Leith had built an empire on cooking schools and catering.
The format was successful because it was simple. Great chefs. Real pressure. The judges were real food experts.
That first banquet took place on 16 June 2006. Three hundred guests. Four winning chefs. One very important birthday girl. Richard Corrigan’s smoked salmon starter. Bryn Williams’s turbot. Nick Nairn’s venison. Marcus Wareing’s custard tart.
A second series was immediately commissioned by the BBC.
How The Competition Actually Works
Here’s how it goes down. Britain is split into eight regions: Scotland, South West, North West, Wales, Central England, London and the South East, North East, and Northern Ireland.
There are four chefs from each region competing. In total, there are 32 chefs competing in each series. They arrive at a specially constructed kitchen filled with cameras and an experienced chef scrutinising their every move.
On day one, they cook a starter. Not just any starter. A plant-based one. It’s been that way since 2023. After all the portions are plated, the veteran chef rates them. The lowest score goes home.
Day two, fish course. Day three, main. Day four, dessert. A second chef is eliminated after dessert. That leaves two.
Friday’s the regional final. Those two chefs have to cook their entire six-course menu over again. All of it. Canapés, starter, fish, main, pre-dessert, and dessert. The three main judges taste everything and select a winner.
Eight regional winners advance to finals week. They face off against each other, course by course. Monday’s canapés and starters. Tuesday’s fish. Wednesday’s mains. Thursday’s desserts. Friday’s the banquet.
The judges choose which dishes get served at the banquet. Occasionally, it’s straightforward. On occasion, two chefs draw with perfect 40-point scores, and the host, Andi Oliver, is forced to cast the deciding vote.
Yeah, that actually happened this year. Twice.
Also Read: Spencer Metzger: The Chef Who Cold-Called The Ritz at 15 and Never Looked Back
The Judges Who Make Or Break Careers
For fifteen years, you knew who’d be judging your food. Matthew Fort. Oliver Peyton. Prue Leith for the first decade, then Andi Oliver after Leith left in 2016.
Fort and Peyton were fixtures from 2006 to 2021. Sixteen series. Hundreds of dishes. Thousands of critical comments were delivered in Fort’s precise manner and Peyton’s Irish brogue.
Then 2022 happened. Complete judging overhaul. Fort and Peyton are out. Tom Kerridge, Nisha Katona, and Ed Gamble are in.
The BBC never explained why. Just thanked Fort and Peyton for their service and moved on. Fans went mental on social media. Some loved the fresh blood. Others felt betrayed. The phrase “Great British Menu judges sacked” started trending, though neither judge was technically fired. More like… not renewed.
Tom Kerridge made sense as a judge. He’d competed on the show twice, winning the main course both times. Two Michelin stars. Multiple restaurants. Proper pedigree.
Ed Gamble seemed like an odd choice at first. Comedian. No professional cooking experience. But he hosts Off Menu, a massively popular food podcast. The man knows restaurants, and he’s not afraid to have opinions.
Nisha Katona brought a different energy. She founded the Mowgli Street Food chain. She’d written five cookbooks. She approached food from a business perspective, which added something new to the panel.
Katona stayed three years. After series 19 wrapped in 2024, she announced she was leaving. No drama. Just ready to move on. She’s got her own ITV show now.
Great British Menu 2025 brought in Lorna McNee as the new judge. McNee won GBM back in 2018. She’s the chef director at Cail Bruich, Glasgow’s only Michelin-starred restaurant. Scotland’s only female Michelin-starred chef, actually.
“Winning Great British Menu back in 2018 made a huge difference to my career,” McNee said when her appointment was announced. She knows what the competition means because she lived it.
The current Great British Menu judges are Kerridge, Gamble, and McNee. Each regional heat also features a guest judge with ties to that area. Past winners like Angela Hartnett, Aktar Islam, and Paul Ainsworth rotate through. Occasionally, they’ll bring in someone like Clare Smyth or even Prue Leith for the finals.
The Chefs Who Made It Matter
Great British Menu chefs come from everywhere. Michelin-starred restaurants. Pub kitchens. School canteens. Hospital cafeterias.
Kirk Haworth won in 2024. He’s a plant-based chef. His dessert, “A Taste of Unity,” beat everyone else despite containing zero dairy. That hadn’t happened before.
A Great British Menu victory often leads to the winner’s career lighting up. Tom Kerridge triumphed twice as a competitor before becoming a judge. His restaurant, The Hand and Flowers, got two Michelin stars, the first time a pub had ever done so.
Who is this year’s champion? Amber Francis. She’s a school chef. Works at Woodfarm High School, East Renfrewshire. Her dessert, “Books, the Mind’s Food,” came with hay-infused cream, fermented strawberries and a presentation inside a wooden school desk.
Three years running now, the dessert chef has taken the overall champion. That tells you something about how important a strong finish is.
Great British Menu London chefs have always brought fierce competition. The capital’s restaurant scene is brutal. If you’re good enough to run a kitchen in London, you’re probably good enough to win GBM.
Sally Abé competed this year representing Central England. She’s the head chef at The Pem in Conrad London St. James. Previously worked under Brett Graham at The Ledbury. She tied for first place twice with perfect 40-point scores but didn’t win either course. That’s how tight the competition runs.
Jean Delport from Sussex won two courses at the 2025 banquet. His sole Veronique honouring Elizabeth David and his joint-winning main course both made it through. The man is from South Africa originally, trained at game lodges in Namibia, and now runs Restaurant Interlude in West Sussex.
The diversity matters. You get chefs from every background. Different training. Different styles. Different approaches to British cuisine.
Themes That Drive The Competition
Every series needs a theme. Something to anchor the dishes. Give them meaning beyond just tasting good.
The 2006 inaugural theme was obvious. The Queen’s 80th birthday. Cook something worthy of serving to Her Majesty.
There have been a wide range of themes since then. In 2009, it was the British troops returning from Afghanistan; in 2012, it was the Olympics; the NHS’s 70th anniversary was in 2018 and the Beatles at Abbey Road in 2019.
Great British Menu 2025 celebrates “Great Britons of the past.” Chefs had to honour historical figures from their region. Scientists. Artists. Explorers. Activists. Anyone who’d made a significant contribution to British history.
Mark McCabe from Scotland created dishes around James Clerk Maxwell, the physicist who predicted electromagnetic radiation. Amber Francis honoured education itself rather than one specific person. Jean Delport picked Elizabeth David, the food writer who changed how Britain thought about cooking.
Some years, the theme works brilliantly. Other years it feels forced. Chefs have to bend their dishes into narratives that sometimes make no sense. “This foam represents childhood innocence,” or “The edible flowers symbolise hope.”
When it works, though, it’s powerful. The D-Day 70th anniversary banquet in 2014 brought veterans to tears. The NHS tribute in 2018 meant everything to the healthcare workers who attended.
Banquets That Actually Matter
The banquets aren’t just fancy dinners. They’re events with real guests who have genuine connections to the theme.
Queen Elizabeth II ate the first menu in 2006. British Olympians attended in 2012. NHS workers came in 2018. Those on the front lines of the pandemic were featured in the 2020 Christmas special.
This year, Blenheim Palace hosted the banquet. Blenheim Palace is the birthplace of Winston Churchill and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The “Great Britons” theme couldn’t have chosen a better setting.
The logistics are insane. Chefs have the luxury of cooking in kitchens that can be miles away from the dining room. Fire regulations mean outdoor barbecues when they’d prefer indoor grills. Guests were trapped in windswept tents due to COVID-19 restrictions.
The 2025 banquet saw chefs battling those familiar problems again. Jean Delport cooked two courses, which meant double the pressure and double the chance for something to go wrong. He pulled it off, but not without some choice words that needed bleeping.
Memorable dishes stick around. Richard Corrigan’s smoked salmon from 2006. Tom Aikens’s “Chicken Egg, Egg Chicken” from 2013. Kirk Haworth’s dairy-free dessert from 2024.
Amber Francis’s school desk presentation this year will be remembered. Not just because she won. Because she brought something different. School food has a terrible reputation in Britain. She proved it doesn’t have to.
What The Show’s Done To British Food
Twenty years ago, British cuisine was still trying to shake its boring reputation. Overcooked vegetables. Bland meat. Nothing exciting.
Great British Menu didn’t single-handedly change that. But it helped. A lot.
The show puts British chefs on national television. Not celebrity chefs. Working chefs running actual restaurants you can visit. It shows the talent Britain’s always had but never properly showcased.
Innovation happens on screen. Techniques filter down. Ideas spread. A chef in Newcastle sees what someone in Cornwall is doing and thinks, “I could try that.”
The vegan starter rule from 2023 caused controversy initially. Now? Chefs are creating plant-based dishes that actually taste good instead of treating them as afterthoughts.
Regional diversity matters too. Scotland’s not just haggis. Wales is more than lamb. Every region gets to show its range.
Restaurant bookings spike after chefs appear on the show. Diners want to taste the food they watched being made. Social media explodes with photos of dishes inspired by the competition.
Whether that’s made British dining better overall is debatable. Some say yes, the quality’s improved dramatically. Others argue it’s created an elite tier of restaurants while leaving everyday cooking behind.
The Format Changes That Shaped Everything
Series one had two chefs per region. Series four jumped to three. Series fifteen brought it to four. More chefs mean more competition but also longer regional heats.
Public voting is used to determine the banquet menu. The top three dishes per course went to a vote. Viewers picked their favourites. That ended after series four when they realised letting the public choose undermined the judges.
Veteran chef judging started in series five. Sticking a former contestant in the kitchen with competitors adds mentorship but also psychology. Some veterans are encouraging. Others… less so.
The starter became plant-based in 2023. Every chef has to cook vegan now for course one. No exceptions. It’s forced creativity in ways nobody expected.
Scoring changed over time too. Early series ranked chefs first through eighth. Now the top three go forward for consideration, giving judges more flexibility in building the final menu.
Andi Oliver took over as presenter and mentor in 2017. She’d been a judge for four series before that. Her energy changed the show’s tone. More supportive. More emphasis on the emotional journey.
Susan Calman presented series fifteen briefly. Kerry Godliman did the 2020 Christmas special. But Oliver’s been the main host since 2020, and she fits the role perfectly.
How To Actually Watch This Thing
Great British Menu airs on BBC Two. Has been doing so since the beginning. Tuesdays through Thursdays at 8 pm during the series run.
Series 20 started 28 January 2025. Eight weeks of regional heats. Finals week ran 24-28 March. The banquet episode aired on 28 March at 7 pm.
Every episode hits BBC iPlayer immediately. You can binge an entire series if you want. All nineteen previous series are available for streaming right now.
International viewers have options too. The show’s sold to networks in other countries. Availability varies depending on where you are.
Want to watch old episodes? iPlayer’s got you covered, going back to 2006. You can see how much the format’s evolved. How much British food culture has changed. How different the judges were back then.
The show maintains an active social media presence. Instagram posts dish photos during each episode. Twitter threads discuss who’s winning. Facebook groups argue about judging decisions.
Fans are passionate. They’ll defend their favourite chefs aggressively. They’ll criticise judges for inconsistent scoring. They’ll debate whether gimmicky presentation matters more than taste.
What Happens After The Banquet
Winning GBM changes careers. Restaurants get booked solid for months. Media requests pour in. Publishing deals materialise.
But losing doesn’t mean failure. Just appearing on the show raises a chef’s profile. Restaurants mention it on their websites. Menus note “as seen on Great British Menu.”
Some chefs use the platform as a springboard to other opportunities. Lorna McNee went from contestant to champion to judge. Tom Kerridge leveraged his wins into a television career and multiple restaurants.
Others go back to their kitchens and keep cooking. The show gave them exposure, but they’d rather focus on the work than the fame.
A few contestants have faced personal crises during or after filming. Stevie McCarry had a complete meltdown during the 2025 dessert finals when his custard pie wouldn’t cut properly. The judges declined to taste it out in the kitchen. He came last in the round.
That kind of public failure is brutal. But most chefs recover. They learn from it. They come back stronger.
The show has created a network of alumni who support each other. Veterans return as guest judges. They mentor new contestants. They recommend each other for opportunities.
The Controversy Nobody Talks About
Every long-running show has behind-the-scenes drama. GBM’s no different.
The “Great British Menu” judges sacked headlines in 2021 sparked genuine anger. Matthew Fort had been there from the start. Fifteen years. Oliver Peyton is the same. Watching them leave felt like the end of an era.
The BBC’s official line was vague. “Refreshing the panel.” “Bringing in new perspectives.” They thanked Fort and Peyton profusely but never explained the actual decision.
Some suspect it was about demographics. Fort and Peyton are older white men. The new panel brought diversity. Ed Gamble’s younger. Nisha Katona represented British-Indian cuisine. Now, Lorna McNee is the first female chef judge since Prue Leith left.
Rachel Khoo judged for exactly one series in 2021. She replaced Prue Leith temporarily. Then she was gone. No explanation. No drama. Just… next.
Judging consistency gets criticised constantly. A dish scores 8 one week and 6 the next for no clear reason. Chefs tie with perfect scores, and Andi Oliver has to pick between them based on… what exactly? It demeans incredible cooking.
Presentation has become more important than taste, according to some critics. Gimmicks matter. Props and theatrics. A dish served in a school desk or a porcelain egg scores higher than one on a plain plate.
The show’s never addressed these complaints directly. They just keep making episodes.
Why It’s Lasted Two Decades
Plenty of cooking shows launch. Most disappear within a few series. Great British Menu just hit its 20th anniversary.
Part of it’s the format. Competitions work. People love watching skilled professionals under pressure. The structure creates natural drama without manufactured tension.
Part of it’s the quality. You’re watching legitimate chefs. Not celebrities pretending to cook. Not amateurs learning basics. Professionals at the top of their field are pushing themselves.
Part of it’s the variety. Eight regions. Different themes every year. New chefs are constantly. The show refreshes itself automatically.
And part of it is timing. Britain’s food culture has improved dramatically since 2006. GBM rode that wave while also helping create it.
The show’s never tried to be flashy. No prize money. No international travel. No guest celebrity judges throwing in random opinions. Just great British chefs cooking great British food.
That simplicity works. Viewers trust it. Chefs respect it. Critics acknowledge it even when they complain about specific elements.
Where It Goes From Here
Series 20 is wrapped. The 2025 banquet’s done. Amber Francis has her champion title.
Series 21 will happen. The BBC hasn’t officially announced it yet, but come on. Twenty years don’t end randomly. The show’s too established. Too popular.
What’ll change? Hard to say. The judging panel might shuffle again. Andi Oliver might eventually step down as presenter. The format could evolve further.
But the core will stay the same. Chefs competing. Judges critiquing. One banquet at the end.
As long as Britain has talented chefs and the BBC has Tuesday evening slots to fill, Great British Menu will keep running.
Twenty years down. How many more to go? Ask again in 2035.
