'I chose Hovingham over Hong Kong and we got our Michelin star' - Mýse’s Jamie Keeble competes in Great British Menu alongside fellow Yorkshire chef Weike Zhao
Two Yorkshire chefs will be on screen competing in Great British Menu this week. Laura Reid speaks to Wood Hall’s Weike Zhao and Mýse’s Jamie Keeble.
Every weekend, growing up in China, Weike Zhao would help her mother cook for the entire family. “I was like her sous chef really,” she remembers. “We would have family over and she would cook for everybody and I think it's that environment I really love. I always think food can bring people together.”
These days, Zhao is in charge of her own kitchen, having spent the last four years as head chef at the 2 AA rosette restaurant at Wood Hall Hotel and Spa in Wetherby, West Yorkshire. She’s French-food trained but her cookery style is combining seasonal and local produce in Yorkshire with Asian flavours inspired by her background. “I like my customers to have a broad flavour profile,” the 40-year-old explains.
Zhao, who lives in Heckmondwike, is one of the four chefs competing in the North East and Yorkshire heat of Great British Menu (GBM), which airs next week. She’ll be taking part alongside returning chef Cal Byerly of Michelin starred Northumberland restaurant Pine who is hoping this year is third time lucky.
Also competing are first timer Ryan McVay a former firefighter, who has opened the first Caribbean restaurant in Sunderland to much acclaim and fellow newcomer and Michelin starred Chef Jamie Keeble, who works at Restaurant Mýse in North Yorkshire.
This year, the chefs are tasked with cooking blockbuster dishes celebrating the British movie industry with links to their region. Viewers can expect tributes to the likes of Dracula, Billy Elliot and Calendar Girls as the chefs are compete for a place to cook a course at the GBM finale, a banquet at Liverpool’s St George’s Hall.
“It was a very interesting project for me to discover all these movies from the North East of England,” says Zhao, who left China for culinary school in Australia in her late teens and started her career there before moving to the UK nearly a decade ago.
“The Great British Menu is a great opportunity for any chef. All chefs want to get a dish to the banquet. It was a really good challenge for me to understand where I am (as a chef),” she says.
“Another reason I wanted to join the show and put myself in front of camera was because I’m a female chef who has been in this industry for almost twenty years. I want to be an inspiration for young women chefs. I know I'm not the best chef and it's very scary to be on the show in front of camera and to show everybody no matter if it's a good thing or something I didn't really do good.
“But I think (that’s) what encouraged me to keep going and to finish the show and give everything I could. The hospitality industry at the moment is not the greatest in history and we have less girls in this industry, cooking in the kitchen.”
The exposure from the show is “amazing”, win or lose, notes competitor Keeble. “In my opinion it's the best cooking show that we have in the UK. There's always some really good talent and some amazing chefs.”
Keeble has been head chef at Mýse in Hovingham for around three years, having taken the job following a six-month stint travelling in Asia. He was planning to work in a restaurant in Hong Kong when he was approached about leading the kitchen at Joshua and Victoria Overington’s York venture.
Seven months after opening, the restaurant was awarded a Michelin star, and Keeble has recently received the Rising Star award in the chef category of the National Restaurant Awards Rising Star event. “I chose Hovingham over Hong Kong,” says the 31-year-old, who lives in Malton. “That definitely paid off.”
Like Zhao, his interest in cooking also stems from his mother, who co-ran a bakery before he was born. “She brought us up and made sure we always had the most amazing, delicious food,” Keeble says. That played a part in his decision to study a cookery course at Sheffield College in his late teens, before taking his first restaurant job at Lords of the Manor in Gloucestershire.
“I think that really solidified my love for this,” Keeble reflects. “I just fell in love with cooking, constantly reading books, eating out at restaurants and learning as much as I could.”
He went on to work at The Wild Rabbit with Tim Allen, then at Ynyshir close to the Snowdonia National Park. These days, he’s settled in Yorkshire and is proud to represent the region on GBM. "It was very different to what you’re used to because it's the complete unknown.,” he reflects.
“You go from how I run a kitchen - how controlled it is and how organised it is and knowing where everything is to stepping foot into a kitchen you've never cooked in before which is essentially a studio. And then you're also trying to work out where everything lives and how to use their equipment…it was tough getting used to that.”
"It was quite nerve-wracking at first when you don't know who you're cooking against as well,” he continues. “You don't know if they're also coming from a Michelin starred restaurant or if they're coming from somewhere that's super popular - you just don’t know what kind of chefs you're up against, what kind of food, how they've met the brief.”
For Zhao, the toughest part of the show was receiving feedback on her food from judges Tom Kerridge, Lorna McNee and Phil Wang. “But if you don't know what the weakness is, you will never improve,” she notes. “So it's always good to know any feedback no matter whether it’s positive or negative.”
- The North East and Yorkshire heat of Great British Menu, presented by Andi Oliver, begins on March 24 on BBC Two and will be available to watch from then on BBC iPlayer.