Great British Christmas Menu (S2020E01) – Watch Online Season 2020 Episode 01

Great British Christmas Menu – Season 2020 Episode 01

An incredible roll call of British chefs, all former winners of the competition, compete to prepare an extra special festive feast for some of the heroes of this year’s pandemic, with a total of 17 Michelin stars competing across the series. Great British Menu judge Andi Oliver takes charge of proceedings as the show’s host.

Tonight, eight former champions compete to create Christmas-themed canapes and starters. And in a twist – they aren’t just cooking – they are judging each other too! Four chefs cook, while the other four taste and score their dishes in a blind tasting with Andi as referee. Then the roles are reversed as they take it in turns to both cook and score. Expect amazing cooking, tough criticism and surprising scores!

The tastes of Christmases’ past provide a lot of inspiration for the chefs, with prawn cocktails, parfait and vol-au-vents all receiving a Great British Menu makeover. Christmas crackers are an inspiration too – both in terms of presentation and in the punning titles of dishes, including Shrimply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time and Not Mushroom Under this Tree.

Each episode, an extra special veteran chef completes the line-up. Tonight it is Michelin-starred Lisa Goodwin Allen, who cooked the starter when Prince Charles was a banquet guest a decade ago and has since gone on to become a regular veteran judge on the competition. Now, to say thank you to key workers, she is bravely putting on her apron again in the GBM kitchen. Expect other big names from GBM’s illustrious history to join her in later episodes.

With only three chefs out of the eight going forward to cook for the judges in the next episode, competition is hot and the standard of cooking world class as the chefs unite to create unforgettable dishes for Britain’s key workers.

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Great British Menu Show Summary

Great British Menu is a BBC television series in which top British chefs compete for the chance to cook one course of a four course banquet.

Series one and two were presented by Jennie Bond, the former BBC Royal correspondent, whereby each week, two chefs from a region of the UK create a menu. In series three and four, both narrated by Bond but with no presenter, three chefs from a region of the UK create a menu; only the two with the best scores went through to the Friday judging. In series five and six, the fifth narrated by Bond while the sixth is narrated by Wendy Lloyd, three chefs from a region of the UK create a menu, with in kitchen judging undertaken by a past contestant chef; only the two with the best scores go through to the Friday judging.

In each series, the Friday show is when chefs present all courses of their menu to a judging panel, tasted and judged by Matthew Fort, Prue Leith and Oliver Peyton. One chef each week goes through to the final, where the judges taste the dishes again and award them marks out of ten. The three dishes that have scored the highest for each course are then put to the public vote.

During the first series, it was decided that a chef could only win one course overall, therefore any chef who won the public vote for a particular course was then eliminated from any subsequent courses they had been shortlisted for. As the results for all four courses were announced on the same day, some chefs were eliminated under this rule. During series two, this rule was dropped, as highlighted by Mark Hix winning both the main course and dessert.

On 28 October 2016, it was confirmed that Prue Leith was leaving the show and would be replaced by Andi Oliver for series 12 in 2017.

On 1 October 2019, Susan Calman was announced as the new presenter for series 15. Filming took place in Stratford-upon-Avon and was completed in November 2019. The show will be broadcast in Spring 2020.

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