Chef Alex cooks up Christmas treats

Chef Alex cooks up Christmas treats

9 December 2020

DUNDRUM chef Alex Greene has emerged cream of the crop as he competes in the Great British Christmas Menu competition.

The 30 year-old — who is the head chef of Deane’s EIPIC restaurant in Belfast — will be seen in action on BBC 2 tonight as he cooks against past winners of the show.

Alex has already got a stunning canape and starter through to a banquet to honour NHS frontline staff and other key workers for their dedication throughout the pandemic.

While he got two dishes through to this year’s Great British Menu banquet to mark 150 years of children’s literature, he was disappointed not to have be crowned Champion of Champions at the banquet.

However, his already successful appearance in the current show has helped him come to terms with it.

Alex told the Recorder that he will be appearing in every episode of the show which ends on Christmas Eve.

“I can’t say what else has happened obviously, but for me it’s been massive, even for the fact that it has a chef winner from every show on it,” he said. 

“The whole thing of getting two courses to the banquet for two years running has never happened before, no other chef has ever done it.”

Alex said that he has met so many people since May who told him he should have won the Champion of Champions title.

“Even Chef Niall Keating, who won the title, has said to me that on three occasions diners at his restaurant who have tried his Great British Menu dishes told him that I should have won,” he said.

“He and I are very good friends now and the exciting thing for viewers is that some of the biggest names in food are still to come through the programme.”

Alex revealed that with the reopening of EIPIC over the summer, he only had just over three weeks to prepare for the competition.

“I was working on the show’s dishes just a week after opening the restaurant so there was a lot of things to juggle and it was an absolute stressor this year.”

The chef, who started off his career at the Buck’s Head in Dundrum also confirmed he has opened up a new shop, Fish and Farm, in Newcastle.

“I am literally not cooking anything,” Alex said of the shop. “I just wanted to open something in the town at the minute as I am planning to open something there next year.

“It’s just a fishmonger’s but I wanted to do it as I’m passionate about fishing. It’s a local grocery store as well with everything in the shop from the island of Ireland and there’s a cheese counter at the back. It’s something a little more bespoke and different.”

He said his parents, Mark and Glynis, can’t keep up with the pace of his success this year.

“My parents have told me that I need to stop now and take a bit of time to myself and enjoy things. But the whole family is proud and supportive.”

See Alex in tonight’s Great British Christmas Menu on BBC Two at 8pm.