Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Fred’s accent now on food
MILLION POUND MENU BBC2, 9pm
CHARISMATIC First Dates maitre d’ Fred Sirieix will entice you to watch this latest challenge-show format, with his irresistible French charm and sage advice.
Fred usually dishes out his views on love, but let’s not forget that he’s in the restaurant business and knows a thing or two about food. If you mashed up The Apprentice with Dragons’ Den and perhaps Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, that might give you an idea of what to expect.
It’s a business format that pitches 12 budding restaurateurs, all hoping to win cash from an investor and turn their dreams into actual bricks, mortar and menus.
“The UK restaurant scene is the envy of the world,” enthuses Fred in THAT accent that makes us hang on his every word.
Fred is good on camera and, just like cooking seductress Nigella Lawson, manages to make everything sound sexy – even when it shouldn’t.
This week, he welcomes two sets of hopefuls, as well as some big investors with a few million to spend between them.
Each new concept is given a three-day trial run in a 40-seater pop-up restaurant in the heart of Manchester.
Ewen owns Shrimpwreck, a street food sensation of deliciouslooking fish burgers. But can he turn it into a restaurant?
And the hugely impressive team of award-winning chef Ruth, just 22, and Emily, 20, the Ritz Hotel’s youngest-ever female sommelier, hope to open fine-dining restaurant Epoch.
“There will be blood, sweat and tears,” says Fred.
And he’s not wrong about that.