Part comedy show, part cooking show, George Egg: Set Menu, is brought to us by the comedian who cooks, albeit using the most unlikely of instruments.
Comprising the best bits of his previously acclaimed cooking shows – Anarchist Cook, DIY Chef and Movable Feast, Egg cooks three plates of beautifully presented food live on stage but not in a conventional kitchen.
Instead, the food is cooked in the most unlikely of ways, presented with Egg’s natural ability for storytelling and chef-y flair. With nothing more than a traditional workshop bench, littered with DIY tool kit stickers, and a range of conventional DIY tools, Egg cooks up three perfectly respectable and surprisingly edible dishes, all available for the audience to try after the show.
The audience learns how to make a grilled aubergine salad on a train with an Apple-branded laptop, which turns out to be a George Forman Grill, seasoning the dish from a refashioned wired mouse that now serves as a salt and pepper mill; a dish of eggs, kippers and sour-dough croutons in a shed with a wallpaper stripper and a Dewalt Air Gun to toast the croutons; and in a hotel room with the use of two upended irons, which he proceeds to make drop pancakes on, as the enticing smells reach our nasal passages.
Hilarious, yet informative and interesting at the same time, George Egg’s timing is impeccable as he moves effortlessly cooking each dish from scratch, with the most unlikely of appliances, peppering the delivery of his cooking skills with a series of jokes, comical observations and culinary tales.
The combination works perfectly to keep us all entertained but sadly the mirror used to show the audience the finished goods needs some further thought, as it’s only at the end of the show, when the finished dishes are presented on a table outside the venue for us all to see, that we can actually witness the ingenuity and flair that has taken place.
According to Egg, the sense of smell is the one that lasts the longest in the memory and much like the smell of the vanilla-scented pancakes he cooks, the joy and the complete barminess of this comedic cooking show will stay with you for a long time after the show has finished. It’s a delicious, fun-hour in which George Egg takes cooking shows to a new level. Eat your heart out Masterchef!