Great British Menu 2023 chefs: Cal Byerley, North East heat

The Staff Canteen

Editor

cal byerley, Chef owner of michelin-starred restaurant pine, is one of four chefs competing for the north east on Great British Menu 2023.

Series 18 of the competition starts on January 31 2023 on BBC Two at 8pm and will air for eight weeks.

Cal is going head to head with chefs Gareth Bartram, Rory Welch and Will Lockwood in a bid to represent the North East in the regional finals, and ultimately cook a dish at the final banquet. This is Cal's debut on the programme.

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Biography

Cal comes from a local family of farmers who have been working in Northumberland since 1805. Together with his friend Ian Waller, whom he met and worked with at Grasmere’s Michelin-starred Forest Side, Cal co-created the food offering at Pine.

The chef started his career in hospitality at the age of sixteen, working in the kitchen at the nearby Robin Hood Inn, where his passion for food and hospitality was born.

Since then, he has worked in some of the UK's best restaurants, including Simon Rogan's Rogan & Co, Cartmel and Forest Side, Grasmere and Jesmond Dene House in Newcastle.

Whilst at Rogan & Co, Cal discovered his passion for pastry and bread making, and was later the head pastry chef working alongside Kevin Tickle at Michelin-starred Forest Side in Grasmere.#

Restaurant Pine

Pine is the debut restaurant by Cal Byerley and his partner Siân Buchan.

The pair dreamt of opening a venture together for several years but it wasn't until the first UK lockdown that it became a possibility.

During that time, they established a high-end home delivery afternoon tea business. It was whilst they were making deliveries, in May 2020, that they visited the site of a building that had previously caught their eye. The building had been taken off of the market, but things took a turn in their favour after a chance meeting with the landlord, which led them to open Pine in May 2021.

Nine months later, the restaurant was awarded a Michelin star and a Green star in the Michelin Guide for Great Britain and Ireland 2022.

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