Great British Menu 2022 chefs: Caroline Martins, North West heat

The Staff Canteen

Editor

Chef and founder of the Sao Paulo project pop-up Caroline Martins is one of four chefs representing the North West on Great British Menu 2022

Series 17 of the competition starts on February 1st 2022 on BBC Two at 8pm and will air at the same time every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for eight weeks.

The North West heat will take place on February 8th, 9th and 10th. Caroline is facing chefs Dave Critchley, Sam Lomas and Stevie Lamb. This is Caroline's first appearance on the show. Before making it to the judge's chamber, the chefs' food is to be judged by veteran chefs Lisa Goodwin-Allen, who appeared on the show in series 5 back in 2010 and took a dish to the banquet, as well as Niall Keating, who competed in 2020 and was crowned the series' 'champion of champions.'

As per the programme's new format which starts each heat with four chefs (as opposed to three, which was the case until series 15), Caroline was eliminated after the fish course. Stevie was the next to go, leaving Dave and Sam to face judges Tom Kerridge, Nisha Katona and Ed Gamble, as well as guest judge Sue Cleaver on Thursday, 10th February 2022.

After cooking for the judges, 26 year-old Head chef at Glebe House Devon Sam Lomas won the North West heat, giving him the opportunity to represent the region in the finals.

Biography

Originally from Barretos in Brazil, Caroline moved to São Paulo to study plasma physics, in which she has a PhD.

She then moved to Caldarache in France to work as a theoretical physicist, then to Austin, Texas, as a university researcher.

As she approached 30, Caroline made the radical decision to change careers completely to become a chef. She took part in MasterChef Brazil, and while she didn't win, which would have afforded her an education at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school, she headed to the London academy anyway.

After this, she spent six months working at two Michelin-starred Trenkerstube at Hotel Castel in Tyrol in Italy, then moved to the UK, where she worked at two Michelin-starred Kitchen Table (then) at Bubbledogs and one Michelin-starred Galvin La Chapelle, before launching her own British-Brazilian fusion concept in Ancoats, Manchester.

Caroline was also a finalist in the Craft Guild of Chefs' National Chef of the Year 2020 competition.

Her chief mission as a chef is to show that there is more to Brazilian food than meat, and uses tropical ingredients imported from her home country combined with local produce from Manchester and its surroundings.

Her dishes on Great British Menu will pay homage to her favourite BBC creations, including Red Dwarf and Monty Python.

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