Simon Hopkinson: A Life Through Food - Part 1
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 977 Ratings
🗓️ 15 June 2015
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Cook and food writer Simon Hopkinson shares his culinary life story with Sheila Dillon. In a food career spanning four decades he's been an influential chef, television cook and author of the "most useful cookbook of all time".
In this first of two special editions, Simon covers his early food memories to his time as a chef, at the height of his powers, in the kitchens of Hilaire and Bibendum restaurants.
Born in Lancashire, Simon Hopkinson was influenced by his parents home cooking and their regular trips to Bury Market. Early memories include the smell of his mother's jugged hare to the sight of black puddings and cheeses on busy market stalls.
In his teens he was committed to a future career in a restaurant kitchen and found work in the nearby Normandie restaurant under the gifted and demanding chef Yves Champea.
By 20 he'd opened his own restaurant and would soon receive awards and high praise from respected guides. In the years that followed he'd work as a restaurant inspector for Egon Ronay and then spend time as a private chef.
By the late 1980's he was back in the restaurant world and one of London's most influential chefs. Sheila Dillon finds out what motivated him throughout and why he was so confident that his life would be one spent in kitchens.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello I'm Sheila Dylan and welcome to this BBC download of the Food Program. |
| 0:06.0 | For information on the BBC's terms and conditions of use, visit |
| 0:09.6 | www. |
| 0:10.9 | BBC.co. UK slash Radio 4. www This week's program is about a cook who grew up in Lancashire in the 1950s and very young fell in love with food and the idea of life in the restaurant world. |
| 0:32.0 | That early conviction took him from a life in the restaurant world. |
| 0:33.0 | That early conviction took him from experiments with his parents' recipe books |
| 0:37.0 | to work at the stove in some of London's most influential kitchens. |
| 0:42.0 | And from there there he inspired a whole generation of chefs. |
| 0:47.0 | He taught me to look at something and never consider saying that will do and it's so important that you look at something and go |
| 0:57.5 | that's how it should be. Makes a bad temper sometimes. |
| 1:00.9 | But for most of his career it was as if he was the food world's best kept secret. |
| 1:06.0 | He was a chef's chef, someone whose talents were recognized far away from the world of tele-cooking and glossy books and magazines. |
| 1:15.0 | But all of that changed because of his writing. |
| 1:18.0 | I always think the most wonderful part of this story is that Roast Chicken and other stories |
| 1:24.0 | knocked Harry Potter off the top slot in the Amazon top 10. It's just a lovely story and |
| 1:29.6 | it's a lovely book. Eventually he'd take his love of food, his kitchen skills and unrivaled culinary memory |
| 1:38.0 | for recipes and tastes to our television screens. |
| 1:42.1 | I'm Simon Hopkinson and cooking means the world to me. |
| 1:45.0 | I love cooking. |
| 1:46.0 | It's my life, it's my passion. |
| 1:48.0 | As a child... |
| 1:49.0 | Simon Hopkinson's culinary journey is both fascinating and delicious, but it also tells a deeper story about our changing |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.