Dundee-born chef Adam Handling, who on his third attempt finally made it to the Great British Menu’s banquet, finally won the entire competition just last week.
The 34-year-old represented Scotland in the competitive TV cooking show, with a dessert inspired by his favourite childhood magazine, The Beano.
Following a vote from the banquet guests, his dessert Food Fight featuring brown butter cake, strawberry jelly and meadowsweet cream was declared the evening’s best dish.
But as expected, he’s not stopped since his triumph, as he crossed yet another achievement off of his bucket list earlier this week.
How does it feel to have finally made it to the banquet and be named Champion of Champions?
Winning Champion of Champions I was a little bit shocked at, because I went from third, second, second, first, to then win, which was nuts.
It felt amazing, I didn’t expect it to be fair.
With those placements, how did you stay motivated during finals week?
I have no problem with self-motivation. I always want to do the best I possibly can, so when I don’t quite succeed I come back fighting harder than ever.
I’m a very positive and progressive person.
Was cooking your dish at the banquet different to cooking in a restaurant?
Yeah. Doing a dish for Great British Menu, they’re designed to be very playful and not so much “restaurant-y” to a degree.
Then having to make – I don’t know how many I made, I think I made 70 or something – I don’t remember, but it was a lot of work.
My dishes aren’t one or two components when it comes to this sort of thing, so there were a lot of different elements.
There was a lot of prep work the day before, just concentrating on one dish there’s a lot of things to do.
How did your previous experiences at Great British Menu help you prepare for this time around?
The actual competition itself, the more times you do it, the more times you realise how it works.
Timings are not very long, you learn all of the equipment, so previous experience definitely helped.
As your dishes on the show are more complex, do you stop making them after it?
Oh no, as of Thursday, the trifle went on my London and my Cornwall restaurants’ menu if anyone would like to try it.
We saw that your aunt was at the banquet, did you have anyone else there?
My aunt was there and I had my two best friends there as well. They had a great time.
One of the people who was at the banquet, she tasted a lot of my dishes. I practiced a lot of times with all my dishes and my friends love it.
What was it like to meet the editor of The Beano?
He was a very happy, very cheeky chappy kind of man. You could tell that his personality shines massively through in The Beano.
I read it growing up, when you’re from Dundee I think you have to.
In addition to your trophy and new title, what else has come from your win?
Yesterday I did a collaboration in Mark’ McCabe’s restaurant, The Ethicurean. He was in the Scottish heats as well.
I do collaborations quite a lot, for instance at the banquet, I’ve known Tom Shepherd for 10 years and I’ve known Nick Beardshaw for five years.
When you get to that level in the competition, we all know of or have heard of each other.
How does it feel to compete against someone that you’ve known for so long?
Everyone’s very positive in a way where we all want to win, but you’re not really competing against them, because they’re your dishes.
So, the only way that someone is going to beat you is if either their dish was genuinely better than yours or you f**k up yourself.
If someone beats you and you didn’t mess up, we all love it.
What are your favourite food and drink spots to visit when you come back to Dundee?
I’m not actually back that often, I’ll be up in June and that’s it this year. I think Dundee needs a little bit more, I have to admit.
You never know, one day I’ll have a restaurant there.
I do nip across the road and go to The Newport Restaurant all the time. I’ve been to that restaurant lots of times, Jamie Scott is a very good chef.
Do you have any old favourites you used to go to growing up that you wish were still around?
To be fair, my family couldn’t really afford going out. So for us, restaurants weren’t something that we ever did.
We literally only had food at home, I don’t think we ever went out at all.
What inspired you to become a restaurant chef then?
The only reason I became a chef is because I didn’t need to go to university. I wish it was a romantic story, but it really wasn’t.
Obviously, I got an apprenticeship job at Gleneagles and I didn’t expect people to live that way. It was pretty remarkable and I fell in love with it. I was inspired.
Now you’ve fulfilled your dream of cooking at the banquet, what’s your next goal?
I have no idea. Wednesday was one of my bucket list moments as I presented the GQ Awards in London.
I got to give the Chef of the Year award away and that was pretty special, because I love GQ.
I’ve got more books in the pipeline after releasing three in one go before Christmas, The Frog, Why Waste? and Perfect, Three Cherries.
They’re all about utilising waste and it only became three books because the first became too big.
I’m a stickler for information, so I wanted loads and loads of information inside of the book, so that anyone can understand how to do something or where it came from.
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