Masterchef to Mastershed!
TV show semi-finalist opens new restaurant – in her back garden
A FORMER Masterchef contestant is giving a new meaning to home cooking – by opening a restaurant in a shed at the bottom of her garden. Kathryn Minchew, 32, who reached the semi-finals of the BBC show, is launching the unique dining experience just yards from her house.
Called The Studio, there is just enough room for six to squeeze in on benches covered in reindeer hide around a hexagonal table. Guests dine from wooden plates and drink from handmade cups.
The tiny restaurant also features an open fire, on which dishes will be cooked in front of diners by the chef for £35 a head.
Miss Minchew said her venture was inspired by a trip to Barcelona, when she visited a restaurant in a flat. She added: ‘I already had a Kota hut, which originate in Finland, in the garden. I was looking at that and thinking I had a readymade restaurant there.’
The mother of three, who has trained around the world, is keeping the exact location of The Studio under wraps, but revealed it was about a mile from Gloucester Quays shopping centre.
Miss Minchew made it to the penultimate round of Masterchef in 2008 but said she never wanted to work ‘in someone else’s restaurant’.
Instead, it was her day job as a copy-writer that encouraged her to start the restaurant. ‘I’ve been running workshops in the hut but what I found was people were here all day and wanting some food,’ said Miss Minchew. ‘I spoke to the council and met all the regulations to be catering here so I already had all of that in place.’
A sample £35 three-course menu will feature a mug of mead to start, followed by butternut squash and Chinese mushroom soup with aubergine crisps.
The main course will be a beef bourguignon served with fire - baked potatoes and petits pois a la Francaise, and a dessert of brandied fruits of the forest with brown sugar ice cream.
Other dishes set to appear on the menu include poached haddock with saffron rice and roasted cherry tomatoes, followed by a margarita syllabub with a salty cookie – food which wowed Masterchef judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode in the TV competition.
Rather than feeling restricted by the small space, Miss Minchew says it means there will be the attention to detail you can’t get in big kitchens. ‘All the negatives were all turned into positives from a diner’s point of view,’ she added.
If the rustic setting does not appeal, she is also planning a second restaurant, this time in her dining room. The Studio launches on November 28 and will open on alternate Fridays.