New children’s TV show Step Up to the Plate promotes restaurant work as an exciting career
Taking telephone bookings with a snake draped around your neck, waiting tables while under fire from foam balls and describing the taste of mealworm burgers might not happen in your average restaurant, but for the children competing in new TV show Step Up to the Plate, it was all good training for what lay ahead: cooking for and serving real customers.
Hosted by chef Allegra McEvedy and presenter and maitre d’ Fred Sirieix, the CBBC series sees teams of 10 to 14-year-olds running their own restaurant and battling for a place in the final. And the aim is not just to entertain, but to give children the message that being a chef or front of house is a viable, exciting career.
‘People think about chefs either as being shouty, like some of the guys on telly, or dinner ladies, but there’s something in between, and I wanted to show them the creativity involved,’ says Allegra. ‘And Fred was keen to promote front of house as being a proper vocational career. People still see being a barman or a waiter as something you do in the summer holidays, whereas in France or America it is what you do, and what you are, and you make good money doing it.’
Throughout the heats, viewers follow the progress of the teams over two episodes: an initial practice day, and a day of serving a restaurant full of hungry customers, including celebrity guests such as AJ Pritchard from Strictly and Girls Aloud singer Kimberley Walsh.
How was the standard? ‘Mixed,’ says Allegra, and laughs. ‘There was a real range of abilities and backgrounds, and that was part of what made the show so magic: you were working with a lot of individuals, just like in a normal professional kitchen.
‘There was always an element of Bugsy Malone and a touch of the lunatics taking over the asylum. It was a live situation: they cooked food to order, it was sent out to the customers, they loved it – or didn’t, on some occasions – and the whole thing was real. It was amazing to give those children that responsibility, and they really did step up to the plate.
‘Some of the time I was honestly gobsmacked and so, so proud of them; other times I was like “Oh my god, the wheels have come off”, and I’d have to jump in to get them back on track. But they all took it very seriously, and so did I, and I think that’s why we got such great results.’
Previously a judge on Junior Bake Off, mum-of-two Allegra, who is also a cookery writer and co-founder of restaurant chain Leon, is used to working with children. But that, she says, didn’t make picking winners any easier. ‘Sometimes they all deserved to go through, and that was heartbreaking,’ says the 48-year-old. ‘There’s one episode where you can quite clearly hear my voice cracking as I send two of them home in a slightly un-grown-up way. But they all had an amazing time, whether they went through or not.’
There’s no doubt that restaurant work teaches useful skills, from teamwork and crisis management to showing initiative and dealing with tricky customers, ‘and the skills are so transferable: working with people you don’t know, treating everyone as equals, realising that every second counts.’
And Allegra says she wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it as a career, ‘if you’re of the right temperament! The kitchen is a tough old place, physically, mentally and emotionally, and it’s not a place for wallflowers. But for someone like me who’s a bit of a maverick, it’s a home. A home and a family.’