Hungry for It

Cooking for the BBC Three demographic. A press release tells us:

The series gives 10 aspiring cooks from all over the UK, all desperate to carve out a career in the food industry, a chance to skill up and put their talent to the test, with one amateur cook winning a life changing prize. The chefs will live together in a house, whilst competing and creating amazing dishes, in an attempt to impress industry experts and mentors.

This exciting new competition plays out in two distinct spaces – a restaurant and a street-food inspired pop-up.

The series will be hosted by Stacey Dooley alongside two industry mentors who'll be judging - chef and rapper, Big Zuu, and personal chef to the stars, Kayla Greer.

It will be the mentors who decide who moves between the restaurant and the pop-up, based on their skills and performance in the challenges. During the course of the series our mentors will arm these novice chefs with an all-round skill set that should allow them to flourish in the industry, but Big Zuu and Kayla will also decide who isn’t cutting it in the kitchen, and who will face the head to head eliminator challenge.

How is this different from Every Other Cookery Show? In particular, how is it different from the bit of Masterchef where they work in real restaurants? The tone is very BBC3 - young, aspirational, eager and earnest in the style of millennials.

Big Zuu, one of the judges, almost overshadowed the contestants - he's funny, genuine, and rides through the occasional rough bit like a supertanker through a breeze. The other judge, Kayla Greer, went on a journey from "the mean one" to "the gently and constructively critical one".

The food also went on a journey, it was to "level up" and "remix" familiar dishes, and serve them in bulk. The worst performers went into a solo "cook off", with one contestant leaving their shared house each week.

The overall winner got a round-the-world trip, cooking in various restarants and for top chefs. Most weeks had a smaller prize, such as to have your sauce put on the menu at a fried chicken establishment.

Hungry for It showed promise, and demonstrated what young cooks could achieve.

Amelia Ng

Dobs Vye

Repeats on BBC1 aired from 13 June 2022 onwards; owing to the sheer number of repeats BBC3 airs, each episode was on at least its seventh broadcast. From episode four onwards, these repeats were preceded on Dave by first run editions from the third series of Big Zuu's other programme, Big Zuu's Big Eats.

One contestant, Louis Makepeace, would later appear on a 2025 episode of Blankety Blank.

BBC programme page