Great British Menu 2020: Hrishikesh Desai, North West heat
This is Hrishikesh Desai's second year in the Great British Menu kitchen.
He is the executive chef at The Gilpin Hotel and Lake House in Windermere, Lake District and the holder of a Michelin star since 2016.
He is also a Roux Scholar, won the Craft Guild's National Chef of the Year in 2010, and trained under such names as Hywel Jones and Thomas Keller. The chef earned a Michelin Star within a year of taking over at The Gilpin.
Raised in the Indian state of Maharashtra, Hrishikesh decided to become a chef during a visit to France, when he witnessed a crème brûlée being blowtorched. Initially, the chef trained to work the front of house, but his mastery of the French language earned him a scholarship to train at the Institut Paul Bocuse in Lyon, and rather than pursue his front of house studies, he decided to stay on and train as a chef.
His food is influenced not just by Indian cuisine and his French classical training, but also Thai and Chinese food, using ingredients sourced far and wide - starting at the heart of Cumbria, where The Gilpin Hotel is located.
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