A la Colthard/foodie travelogues
Cooking and television have a productive relationship.
Before Big Brother, Peter Bazalgette made his name and the start of his fame and fortune with Ready Steady Chef. This launched the celebrity chefs like Pierre Marco White , Jamie Oliver and Keith Floyd.
The phase has now moved onto travelogues and cuisine.
Fred Sirieix, who comes from Limoges France, plied his trade at Galvin Windows in the Hilton and Sartoria – both of which I knew well – before hosting a TV dating programme.
He is a smoothie but accomplished TV performer. The theme of his programme Remarkable Places to Eat on More 4 on Mondays is to visit an European area with someone who knows its culinary delights.
The first was Puglia and the expert Dermot O’Leary.
I once attended a Cookery Week in Puglia which is known for its cucina povera (peasant cooking), an old trick where a restaurant serves up an artisan dish of say fish stew with leftovers and convinces the diner to pay over the odds for it.
It’s a fly on the wall programme and Sirieix and O’Leary are professional enough to make the viewer think their conversation and bonhomie front of camera are not contrived when it almost certainly is.
Nonetheless in our awful summer it’s quite uplifting to see warm climates and a part of Italy that is not that well known.
Last Monday Fred was in Majorca with a Guardian writer who is a Bake Off judge.
My husband Olly said a Guardian journo is the last person he would like to meet on holiday.
This one even the camera angles could not disguise that she liked a fattening pastry – don’t we all!!!.
I have no wish to go to Majorca and their choices did not tempt me but Sirieix was interesting on the logistics of a popular beach restaurant serving meals all day and night. No doubt about it, food travelogues are popular television.
Another I recorded was Rick Stein’s Cornwall.
I visited his first fish restaurant in Padstow as the location was once owned by a bit of rough I ‘knew’ there.
They served fresh fish and it was good – so good Rick Stein opened another and now Padstow is called Padstein.
He made the right noises in his programme about sustainability – so he moves with the times – and has done much to promote Cornwall. Nonetheless one felt the programme was self-indulgent, if not self-serving
Time was when watching TV was a family activity. Sad to say that when our 2 boys en famille watch TV it is with a mobile in hand, texting, or playing on their game consoles.
