Sous Chef from Fulham dreams of being MasterChef

BY YANN TEAR
yann@slpmedia.co.uk

However it pans out for her this week, it has been quite an adventure for Claridges sous chef Olivia Burt, who has made it to knock-out week in this year’s BBC TV show MasterChef: The Professionals.

She was among 48 hopefuls whittled down to 12 for this week’s penultimate stage and fighting for a place in next week’s semi-finals.}

The 24-year-old from Fulham has been working at the five-star hotel in Mayfair for three years.

She’s been a chef for six years, ever since she realised, while doing a ski season, which included catering for chalet guests, that all she wanted to do was cook.

She has impressed the judges with her style and techniques in her heat and quarter-final.

“It’s all about putting my skills and my passion into a career-defining moment,” she said at the outset.

She is in a team of 60 chefs doing 1,000 covers a day at Claridges, so is used to coping with pressure, but she admitted during her heat: “It’s
definitely the most pressure I’ve experienced.”

She started off with the ambition of becoming a pastry chef, but grew to love the cut and thrust of hot food and hot kitchens. “I love the speed, the heat, everything,” she said.

In the quarter-final, she had to devise a rice dish from scratch but said her experience of receiving requests from around the world – especially Arabia – to produce the perfect food with half a day’s notice stood her in good stead.

Her spicy Middle Eastern dish wowed the judges for its daring.

Her second round test involved a starter of beef tartare, with smoked egg puree, picked shallots and sourdough crisp.

Her main dish was pan roasted monkfish with mussels.

“Bold and quite brave” was how one of the judges described her menu for expert palettes, and her starter was described as “miraculous and truly exceptional”.

The monkfish dish was described as: “poetry made flesh” by leading food critic William Sitwell.

“I just want to keep eating Olivia’s food,” said Jimi Famurewa, another of the expert food tasters.

The bar was raised today and the standards got a lot higher,” Olivia said after last week’s eliminator.

“Now I’ve just got to keep calm and go forward.”