Food Poker facts for kids

Food Poker was a fun BBC TV show. It mixed cooking skills with the game of poker. The show was presented by Matt Allwright. Jeni Barnett was the voice-over narrator. Each episode featured four different chefs. It first aired on BBC Two in 2007. The show ran from October 29 to December 7, 2007.

How Food Poker Works

The show started with chefs getting two "food cards." They could also use up to three ingredients from five "shared ingredient" cards. These shared cards were like the community cards in poker.

The chefs then secretly decided what dish they would make. They could either "pitch" their idea or "fold." To "fold" meant they didn't think they could cook anything good with the ingredients. If they "pitched," they presented their idea to the Food Poker Panel. This panel had seven food experts.

The panel then voted using poker chips. They chose two dishes they wanted to see cooked. There were three main rounds in the show:

• The savoury cook-off
• The sweet cook-off
• The final showcase cook-off

Cooking Challenges

Once two chefs were chosen, they had 20 minutes to cook their dishes. For the Sweet Cook-off, they only had 15 minutes. This time was very fast-paced. Chefs often joked or competed with each other while cooking.

After cooking, the dishes were shown to the seven food experts. The experts then voted for their favorite dish. They did not use poker chips for this vote. This voting style was used for the savoury and sweet cook-offs. The final showcase cook-off had a different way of deciding the winner.

The Showcase Cook-off

This was the final round. The two winners from the earlier rounds competed here. In this round, the chefs saw one main ingredient card. This ingredient had to be the star of their dish.

Then, they chose from many other ingredient cards. Once a chef picked a card, the other chef could not use it. This meant chefs could pick ingredients they needed. They could also "steal" ingredients they thought their opponent would want. This made the game more strategic.

Chefs had 20 minutes to prepare their dishes in this round. The two finished dishes were then shown to the two chefs who lost in the earlier rounds. These losing chefs voted for their favorite dish. If there was a tie, the presenter, Matt Allwright, decided the winner.

Chefs on the Show

Many famous chefs appeared on Food Poker. Here are some of the regular chefs:

• Martin Blunos
• Gennaro Contaldo
• Peter Gordon
• Maria Elia
• Lawrence Keogh
• Allegra McEvedy
• Jun Tanaka
• Atul Kochhar
• Stuart Gillies
• Paul Rankin
• Theo Randall