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After two months of battling it out in regional and national heats on the BBC's Great British Menu, Jason Atherton, Glynn Purnell and Stephen Terry won the right to cook for a party of culinary glitterati atop London's iconic Gherkin building. Tom Vaughan caught up with the chefs the morning after the dinner
How did the evening go?
ST Really well. There was a lot going on, but the food was the main part of the event.
JA No, we were the main event Come on !
ST OK, fair enough, we were cooking for the world's cheffing elite.
GP And Terry Wogan.
ST And Ronnie Corbett.
Was it hard cooking two courses, Jason?
JA It worked out fine. It was an honour to be asked to provide two of them and equal Mark Hix's record. Winning them was great, because it massages your ego, but then reality kicks in and you realise you actually have to come up with them on the day.
Steve, why did you do a little dance, when you lost to Jason for the main course?
ST I wouldn't go so far as to call it a dance. It was more of aThank God I don't have to cook two courses and Jason does." My duck dish that came second to Jason's beef was thrown together hi a day. In terms of the depth of Jason's dish, mine didn't scratch the surface. So Jason was better placed than me to serve it to the world's cooking elite.
What feedback did you get from the other chefs there?
GP Well, I kissed Pierre Gagnaire.
JA At one point when we were trying to get ready for service we had the man Heston, Thomas Keller, Gagnaire, Elena Arzak and Carlo Cracco all standing in the kitchen watching our mise en place and asking questions. It would have been easy to have got bowled over. We had our photo taken in front of the ice sculpture with all of these culinary greats at the end.
ST It's one thing eating in these people's restaurants and buying their cookbooks, but when they're actually there attending an event that you're cooking for and you're the focus of, it's different.
GP When we came...