Content area
Full Text
A menu created to showcase the best of British cuisine on the international stage is dominated by dishes created by the restaurateur and award-winning Independent columnist and chef Mark Hix.
Hix, who runs a string of top London restaurants, including The Ivy, is not new to the topic of national cuisine. He has written many times about the importance of reinventing British staples and why we should try to use native seasonal food such as game.
The champion of British food said he was "honoured" to get both his rabbit and crayfish pie - a modern take on the classic Cornish stargazy pie - and perry jelly pudding through a succession of heats and into the grand finale of BBC2's Great British Menu series, which pitted some of the country's top chefs against each other. Hix said: "You were only supposed to win one course each, but they made an exception. I am very pleased."
Few people mock British cuisine as much as the French, yet when the Hixdominated menu is served during the showcase final instalment of Great British Menu, the venue will be the table of the British ambassador in Paris."Everyone else wanted to outdo the French, but I got through with pie and jelly," said Hix.
"I think it's because I showed we had nothing to prove to them - we just needed to clarify that we have great ingredients and cooks."
This greatest example of the nation's cuisine is the culmination of the Great British Menu series, which has seen 14 chefs, representing their regions, battle through seven episodes to get their dishes on to the sought-after four-course menu.
Until now, menus have been eliminated by the panel of three expert...