Food Management Today magazine (the sister title to Meat Management) has announced that popular celebrity chef and TV broadcaster John Torode is to host the annual FMT Food Industry Awards ceremony and lunch that will take place in London on 3rd February.
A hugely popular and influential figure on the UK culinary circuit, John Torode is best known as the straight-talking co-host and judge of BBC1's MasterChef, Celebrity MasterChef and Junior MasterChef, as well as the presenter of A Cook Abroad: John Torode's Argentina and The A to Z of TV Cooking for BBC2.
John also went back to his roots in 2014 with a culinary road trip across Australia for his series John Torode's Australia, followed in 2016 with his Malaysian Adventure; a 10-part series exploring the vibrant and varied cuisine of Malaysia.
Australian by birth, John is credited as one of the main players in introducing Australasian food to the UK in the mid-1990s. In 1992 he joined the Conran Group, starting out at Pont de La Tour before becoming sous chef at Quaglino's. In 1995, John became head chef for the launch of Mezzo in Soho; at the time one of Europe's largest restaurants.
He opened the unique Smiths of Smithfield in 2000. The four-floor Grade-II listed restaurant, private dining room and café, located in the heart of Smithfield Market, was a roaring success under his leadership and became a firm fixture on both the restaurant and bar scenes during his tenure. John's second restaurant venture was another popular multi-storey operation, The Luxe, which opened at Spitalfields Market in 2009.
John is passionate about sourcing the best of British produce, particularly within the meat industry, where he has long been a champion of rare breeds. In his quest to source the very best produce whilst at Smiths, he built strong relationships with many small farmers and butchers throughout the UK and aimed to share his knowledge through his widely distributed ‘Fine Meat List’.
John's third cookbook; John Torode's ‘Beef’ and other bovine matters not only gives us every which way to cook with beef, but also details the history and importance of great and rare breeds, butcher's recommended cuts and true head to tail eating. The follow-up book, John Torode's Chicken and Other Birds needs no explanation!
Editor of Food Management Today, Emily Ansell Elfer, was delighted to announce the news: “It’s fantastic to hear that John Torode will host and present our Food Industry Awards at the ceremony and lunch in London next February. He is a hugely popular TV celebrity and his food credentials are second to none. We are set fair for another successful Awards and product nominations and votes have already started to come in prior to judging in the early autumn this year.”
John became a familiar face to TV audiences back in 1996 as the resident chef on ITV's This Morning with Richard and Judy; a role in which he continued for four years. Since 2004 John has paired up with Gregg Wallace, handing out feedback, criticism and support to hundreds of hopefuls aiming to be crowned MasterChef (or indeed Celebrity MasterChef) and is also the judge and co-host of CBBC's Junior MasterChef. In 2011 John and Gregg also teamed up to guest host Have I Got News For You for BBC1. They are the first ever duo to co-host the satirical current affairs quiz.
He has championed British beef and Aylesbury duck in the Great British Food Revival, judged bake-offs for the Blue Peter appeal, appeared as an expert panellist on The Apprentice: You're Fired, is a frequent guest chef and host on Saturday Kitchen and a popular guest on shows such as The One Show, Loose Women, BBC Breakfast, Daybreak, Ask Rhod Gilbert and The Alan Titchmarsh Show as well as numerous radio programmes. He has also appeared in spin-off editions of MasterChef for Comic Relief and Children in Need. John has travelled internationally to promote his books and appeared on the hit US show Today for NBC, and been a guest judge in three seasons of MasterChef Australia.
John's TV programmes regularly attract a huge audience. Indeed MasterChef's popularity has placed John and Gregg on the front cover of several magazines including the Radio Times and spawned several cookbooks. Sainsbury's Magazine readers even voted MasterChef as the Top TV Food Show of the decade and it has been included in the Top Ten list of the most Sky ‘Plussed’ shows of the year.
John has also been a hit on the popular TV channel Good Food. He teamed up with comedian Hardeep Singh Kohli back in 2008 for a 10-part series exploring the diverse culinary communities of multicultural Britain. Within the first week the show was already proving a real success, overtaking the rest of the channel's ratings.
A well-known food writer, John regularly contributes to Olive and BBC Good Food magazines, as well as Radio Times and Red magazine, and has supplied numerous articles for the Guardian, Daily Mail and Observer newspapers. John's latest cookbook My Kind Of Food: Recipes I Love to Cook at Home was published in September 2015.
For details of the FMT Food Industry Awards and to vote or enter products go to www.foodmanagement.today/awards
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
