Main content

Dan Barber: My life in five dishes

How true flavour will revolutionise food and the mistake that re-focused his life's work.

In an illustrious career spanning three decades, there’s little that booking-writing, seed-breading, ‘philosopher chef’ Dan Barber has not put his hands to. Celebrated as the poster child of the ‘farm to fork’ movement, he tells Graihagh Jackson how a visit to a wheat farm called into question everything he thought he knew about agriculture and changed his cooking and ethos forever.

Surprisingly though, Dan started life wanting to be a writer not a chef. Through five dishes, we hear how a failed stint as a baker, a baptism of fire in french kitchens and running a company from a mice-infested kitchen eventually won him over to the cause. We learn that an obsession with simplicity and flavour has taken him on a farming odyssey around the world, what coronavirus can teach us about the future of food, and how it all started with a humble dish of scrambled eggs.

If you would like to get in touch please email thefoodchain@bbc.co.uk

(Picture: Chef Dan Barber. Credit: Richard Bolls/´óÏó´«Ã½)

Available now

28 minutes

Last on

Sun 16 May 2021 07:32GMT

Broadcasts

  • Thu 21 May 2020 02:32GMT
  • Thu 21 May 2020 10:32GMT
  • Thu 21 May 2020 15:32GMT
  • Thu 21 May 2020 17:32GMT
  • Thu 21 May 2020 21:32GMT
  • Thu 21 May 2020 22:32GMT
  • Sun 24 May 2020 07:32GMT
  • Mon 25 May 2020 00:32GMT
  • Thu 13 May 2021 03:32GMT
  • Thu 13 May 2021 04:32GMT
  • Thu 13 May 2021 10:32GMT
  • Thu 13 May 2021 21:32GMT
  • Thu 13 May 2021 22:32GMT
  • Sun 16 May 2021 07:32GMT

Featured in...

Food Chain highlights

Tea, coffee, spices, chillies ... snack on a selection of programme highlights

Podcast