Take a Food Tour round Britain with The Hairy Bikers! (Hairy Bikers Food Tour of Britain)

Member Name: debbi256

Product:	Hairy Bikers Food Tour of Britain
Date:	25/09/09 (101 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Down to earth lads who love what they do, no poncy chefy ego's or food here.

Disadvantages: None.

I love the Hairy Bikers, down to earth Northern (yay!) lads who don't profess to be the best cooks in the World but are still brilliant cooks all the same. They're not professional cooks but life-long foodies and their love of food shines through in all that they do.

The Hairy Bikers are two best mates, Simon King and David Myers who believe it or not actually met on a Catherine Cook adaptation, Simon worked behind the scenes in TV as an assistant director and Dave as a make-up artist! For BBC2 they have made two series of The Hairy Bikers Cookbook, a third series called The Hairy Bikers Ride Again, a one-off special, The Hairy Bikers Come Home, which sees them visit them home towns of Newcastle for Simon and Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria (my neck of the woods!) for Dave and the four-part series The Hairy Bakers and then a one off hour long special The Hairy Bakers Christmas Special.

Back to the programme in question, their new show which airs on BBC2 at 5.15pm is called The Hairy Bikers Food Tour of Britain. It really is a joy to watch, with 30 shows covering 30 Counties all over the UK they aim to show that for the best food available, there really is no place like home.

The format of each show see's them start off by speaking to local people asking them what food best sums up that particular county and then once they have an idea of what food that particular county is famous for,they then visit local food producers and hunt out their ingredients which they then cook on location in front of a crowd of locals and get them to sample their cooking, a dish that is one of the county's traditional favourites.

The main part of the show see's the boys have a cook-off against one of the best chef's in each County to create a dish using the local produce they have sourced that best sums up "The County on a plate" this is then judged by a group of diners in the Chef's restaurant. The Chef's dish is brought out and tasted by the diners, followed by the Hairy Bikers, the winner is then chosen by a show of hands.

I think the key to making this programme work so well is down to the boys themselves. They're so down to earth, funny (actually hilarious at times!) and enthueseastic. They're just really nice, friendly lads who you warm to straight away, they have such a natural way with folk making them feel at ease straight away, no big chefy ego's here, the same goes for their cooking, just good old down to earth grub, no namby pampy poncy chefy stuff like you see off some TV chefs (Cough, Heston Blumenthal, Cough!), they actually make stuff that you could see yourself tucking into.

So if you get a chance, I highly recommend tuning in and watching this show, there's still another 6 shows left to go, and if you do want to catch up on the rest, I'm sure they're available to watch on BBC iplayer.

Summary: Lovely Lads, Lovely Food!