Dundrum chef Alex cooks for celebrities

Dundrum chef Alex cooks for celebrities

20 April 2022

IMAGINE booking into a guest house and having a top chef cooking for you — that’s the premise for a new show starring Dundrum chef Alex Greene.

Famed for his success on Great British Menu, Alex will head up B&B By The Sea for BBC Northern Ireland. 

The guests will be celebrities such as Richard Blackwood, Linford Christie, Deborah Meaden from Dragon’s Den and Fred Sirieix from First Dates.

Celebrities will come to stay in an authentic guesthouse in Downhill in Co Londonderry run by Alex and a cast of exciting hospitality talent. 

Each episode will see a different celebrity guest, all with strong connections to the coast, stay at the guesthouse.

Together with Alex and the team, the celebrities will explore the surrounding regions, discovering local produce and ingredients before returning to the kitchen to transform them into dishes.

Alex, who is head chef at Michael Deane’s Michelin starred Eipic restaurant in Belfast, won the Northern Ireland regional heat of Great British Menu in 2020.

He went on to have two courses in the final — a starter and dessert — but failed to win Champion of Champions at the banquet which was held to mark 100 years of children’s literature. 

The 32 year-old has since been ranked in the top 10 chefs by Michelin and was a contender for Chef of The Year.

He first started his culinary career as a 11 year-old washing dishes in the Buck’s Head restaurant in his home village.

Having once worked in Claridge’s in London and also ran his own restaurant, Top Nosh, in Annalong, Alex returned to Deanes EIPIC restaurant in Belfast, where he had worked previously, and helped it retain its Michelin star ever since.

B&B By The Sea is made by Afro-Mic Productions with support from  Northern Ireland Screen. 

It will be shown on BBC One Northern Ireland, BBC Two and on BBC iPlayer.

It’s the second new commission announced along with the second series of local drama Hope Street.

Carla-Maria Lawson, outgoing head of BBC Daytime and Early Peak, said: “B&B By The Sea and Hope Street are further examples of Daytime’s commitment to work more closely with our colleagues across the UK, bringing authentic representation to screen and strengthening our relationships with supplies across the nations.”