TV star opens up restaurant
A STAR of MasterChef: the Professionals has been put in charge of a new North East restaurant.
Matei Baran, who reached the quarter finals of the BBC Two show in 2016, has been appointed executive head chef of The Salt Cove at the Park Hotel in Tynemouth.
The forty-year-old, who moved to the North East from his native Romania in 2009, is already well-known by the region’s fans of fine food. He was previously the head chef at Newcastle’s Jurys Inn as well as executive head chef at the Bannatyne Hotel, Darlington, and Northumberland Arms in Felton.
He said: “All my family – my father, my grandmothers – they always cooked at home. For me it’s a passion. I think I have it in my blood.”
Matei arrived in the North East by chance after being offered a job in Otterburn and, alongside the experience of working in a professional kitchen, trained at Newcastle College.
Two years ago, he qualified for the televised rounds of Master Chef: the Professionals but broke his hand playing football in a charity event the day before his first appearance. “I couldn’t bend my hand,” he said. “I couldn’t hold a knife but I knew that if I told them they wouldn’t let me compete.”
Nevertheless, he went on TV and reached the quarter finals. Now he says he wants to put The Salt Cove on the culinary map.
“I’m really excited because I’ve never opened a restaurant,” he added. “The owners understand what they will get from me and I know what they want. In six months, I think this place will be heaving. The competition is huge around here, so you need to come up with something new and tasty. I know – because we are right by the sea – that people will expect the menu to be 90% seafood. But if you look around, everything is fish, fish, fish, so we’re aiming for 40% fish and 60% on the meatier side.”
The chef is already developing relationships with local producers and, once the restaurant is established, he plans to hold special dining events at the venue.
The hotel has recently been refurbished under a £3m project, which involved a revamp of all 55 guest rooms and the creation of The Salt Cove. The 120-seater restaurant will open t on September 28. Kara Beecroft, the hotel’s sales and marketing manager, said: “The restaurant looks fantastic and we now have somebody who will provide our customers with the food to match their surroundings. The transformation of the hotel and creation of The Salt Cove has taken a long time and cost a significant amount of money, but everything is now ready for guests and customers to see the results of a lot of planning and hard work.” MATEI BARAN