EXCLUSIVE: Chef Rohan Wadke is treating his appearance on BBC’s Great British Menu as much as a storytelling exercise as a cooking competition, using Scottish cinema as the springboard for a series of playful, narrative‑driven dishes.
Invited to compete in the Scotland heat of the latest series, he describes just being there as a milestone. Speaking with Larder Magazine, Rohan Wadke said: “Just to receive that phone call from the BBC saying, ‘We’d like to invite you for Great British Menu’ is a massive thing. You always watch these shows, and you don’t imagine you’ll someday be on the same channel.
“I remember sitting as a kid, watching BBC and Discovery, seeing Rick Stein or Gordon Ramsay cooking and thinking, that’s great. Suddenly, it’s come full circle and now I can see myself on TV doing something very similar.”
This year’s brief asked chefs to create dishes inspired by British movies and moviemakers, with the Scottish heat spotlighting Scotland’s own film heritage. “At the start, they said you can choose any British movie, any actor or director,” he said. “Then they focused it on Scottish films, which was actually a really exciting challenge – it pushed me to discover and celebrate more Scottish cinema and find stories that would really work on a plate.”
Rohan worked through several line‑ups as he refined ideas and titles. He said: “I did so many drafts. I kept exploring different films and kept tweaking until the menu felt right. I was still making little changes the week before filming.”
“This competition is very different, because it’s not just about doing your food. You’re telling the story of what the dish is about and connecting it to the theme. That really attracted me.”
One of his standout courses was based on Danny Boyle’s Edinburgh thriller Shallow Grave. Rohan Wadke said: “It’s a story about flatmates who take in a new lodger. He dies, and they discover a suitcase full of money in his room. They decide to keep the money and hide the death. That’s where my dish, Page Plot, came from.”
He translated the film’s dark tension into a moody, textural plate. “I did everything in a black theme,” he says. “Instead of normal cutlery, I used spoons and forks shaped like shovels, like you’re digging a grave. There was edible soil and edible gravel, so it really connected to the graveyard idea and to the scene I was talking about.”
“On the black plate I put the potato as the main character, and all the chunks of mince were unfolding the story around it, like the different flatmates. There was also a little RIP sign. I got full marks for the food, which was really good for me.”
Local Hero, phone boxes and canapés
Local Hero, the classic story of a Texan oil executive sent to buy up a Highland village who falls in love with the place, provided another rich seam of inspiration. Wadke, said: “He comes from this busy Texas town, and then suddenly everything calms down in the Scottish village. I needed to represent that on the plate, with local fish and a strong sense of place.”
One of the most striking elements was a miniature red phone box, echoing the film’s famous calling‑home scenes. “Every time he calls back to Texas in the film, he goes to this one telephone box,” Rohan explains. “That’s why the telephone box was on my dish. I put curry oil inside the box. When I presented the dish, I poured the curry oil from it over the plate – it’s actually a teapot.”
His canapé also drew on Local Hero, but shifted focus to real‑world food culture. He said: “I thought about street vendors around the world who work so hard but don’t get recognised. I used something simple like cauliflower and imagined it growing in the field. When it comes to the plate, it becomes the hero. Just like street vendors, I wanted to recognise them through that canapé.”
Behind the scenes, the shoot was as demanding as any kitchen service. “It’s a long day, you start around six in the morning and finish about nine at night. It’s very tiring because you’re not used to doing that two days in a row with cameras on you.”
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In the end, he narrowly missed out on cooking the main and dessert. “The score was tied between four of us and only three could go through, so it came down to the canapé score,” he explained. “The judge said the chilli was a little bit strong, and that’s where I dropped. But I didn’t want to change my style just for the competition. I wanted to cook as I cook in my own kitchen and keep the narration strong.”
For future plans, Rohan has school pop‑ups planned in Glasgow, a collaboration at The Bawbee in Bridge of Allan, and a cooking series in the works with German kitchen brand Miele. “There are two pop‑ups coming up already, and some other exciting things in the pipeline,” he told Larder Magazine.
