THE CHEF who masterminded the Queen’s lunch during her visit to Dundee yesterday told how he transformed a bunch of untrained teenagers into a crack squad in a scene reminiscent of TV show Jamie’s Kitchen.

Dundee College lecturer Mike Robinson had just four weeks to train the seven youngsters, aged 15 to 17, so they could prepare a meal fit for a queen at The Shore youth venue.

Mike, who also works at The Shore, said the young people responded magnificently to the challenge and presented a meal that a team of trained chefs could not have bettered.

TV chef Jamie Oliver faced a similar challenge when he took on the task of training young people with no cooking experience to work in his new London restaurant, 15.

The Dundee teenagers, regulars at the venue, began learning their kitchen skills a month ago when they prepared the menu for the Scottish Youth Parliament which met at the Shore Terrace venue last month.

However, they did not have quite that long to practise for the Queen’s visit. “We sent three menus to the Palace and we found out a week-and-a-half ago which one the Queen would prefer,” said Mike yesterday.

“That’s when we started preparing the lunch that would be served to the royal couple. We had a sort of dry run on Thursday for 16 people but we were serving fillet steak today and we couldn’t afford to serve it as well during our practice!

“On the day, they did absolutely brilliantly. I couldn’t have asked them to do any better, especially when they were not professional chefs. In fact, even with trained chefs we couldn’t have done it any better.”

The set menu consisted of fillet steak in a coarse grain mustard sauce with crushed potatoes and chives and baby carrots. The vegetarian option was an asparagus risotto. Desert was a white chocolate and vanilla panna cotta.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh showed their appreciation for the kitchen staff’s efforts when they met them at the end of their engagement at The Shore.

Mike said, “She said it was very nice and both she and Prince Philip were quite complimentary. In fact, I heard one of the royal equerries saying it was better than the food that is served at the Palace!”