Beccles Food & Drink Festival Cookery Theatre
Last year the Cookery Theatre was located within New Market and the wonderful Lauren Ellis from Coutts bank was our headline chef.
This year, the location for our cookery theatre will once again be in New Market, in the centre of the Grazing Trail, and is based on the Local Flavours mobile unit. This bespoke vehicle has been secured through generous contributions from East Coast College Lowestoft and Fen Farm Dairy.
As well as future chefs from the college, we hope to line up some exciting demonstrations from a variety of excellent chefs to provide culinary inspiration
Last year the Cookery Theatre was located within New Market.
Our headline chef in the Cookery Theatre was Lauren Ellis from Coutts Bank.
We have again this year managed to organise the Local Flavours mobile unit. This bespoke vehicle has been secured through generous contributions from East Coast College Lowestoft and Fen Farm Dairy.
As well as future chefs from the college, we hope to line up some exciting demonstrations from a variety of excellent chefs to provide culinary inspiration.
This year’s schedule of the Chef Demonstrations is still to be confirmed.
Details about the chefs appearing last year are shown below.
2023 Cookery Theatre Demonstration Schedule
TIME: 11:00 am
DESCRIPTION: Strawberry and Elderflower Tart with pastry cream filling.
CHEF: Lauren Ellis (Coutts Bank)
TIME: 12:00 pm
DESCRIPTION: A dish using ingredients from some of our stalls.
CHEF: East Coast College Student
TIME: 1:00 pm
DESCRIPTION: Stuffed skate with brown shrimp, leek and bacon sauce.
CHEF: East Coast College Student
TIME: 2:00 pm
DESCRIPTION: Sourdough margarita pizza with salsa verde, followed by a mascarpone, white chocolate and lime sweet pizza.
CHEF: Rebecca Bishop
TIME: 3:00 pm
DESCRIPTION: Thai papaya salad (son tam) and a Penang style curry with prawn.
CHEF: Scott Nathan (Easy Tiger Restaurant Beccles)
2023 Chef Bios
Dave Patterson
Dave Patterson is a Chef Lecturer at East Coast College, where he trained. Now based at the Lowestoft Campus, he has spent 25 years in the industry, with the last 15 of them teaching the chefs of tomorrow.
Dave has a wealth of industry knowledge and has run his own catering company alongside his teaching role for the last 9 years.
He has run the cookery theatre at Beccles Food and Drink Festival since 2017, and helped to build the event’s reputation through his professional approach.
Lauren Ellis
Lauren Ellis is the Head Pastry Chef at Coutts Bank in London. She trained at Great Yarmouth College, and after qualifying took a leap of faith and moved to London to pursue a career as a chef.
Lauren worked for Marcus Wareing at his Michelin starred restaurant Marcus in the Berkeley Hotel, Knightsbridge. Here she found her love for pastry, which she decided to focus on. Moving on to work in a couple of other places to fine tune her pastry skills and to practise her chocolate work, expanding her knowledge before being head hunted by Coutts Bank in 2018. Working her way up, she fulfilled her dream by being appointed Head Pastry Chef.
Scott Nathan
A Self Taught chef with a passion for cooking, My career was forged in the hotels and restaurants of London before moving to Suffolk for a new start in life in 2013.
I had the opportunity to work in a broad range of kitchens and cuisines which allowed me to throw myself into every corner of any kitchen I worked in.
The last 5 years I was settled into a role at Graze at the White Horse in Beccles; cooking modern British cuisine but really had a passion for Asian Food and found myself researching Japanese, Thai, Malaysian and Korean cooking and Techniques
When given the opportunity to front Easytiger by Kevin and David from Graze at the White Horse in Beccles I jumped at the chance to materialise a shared vision and concept that we hope has brought something new to the town.
Rebecca Bishop
Rebecca Bishop is a baker, food writer, award-winning bakery founder and baking teacher. Her love for long fermented bread and pastries led her to open Two Magpies Bakery, a bakery, cafe and shop, in a Southwold in 2013.
This first location was an ode to modern baking, with the open plan bakery allowing customers to watch as crusty sourdough loaves were pulled steaming from the deck oven and delivered straight to the shop counter.
From there the Two Magpies team opened 7 new shops, all of which proudly represent Rebecca’s love of slow baking, big flavours and quality, local ingredients. Now a household name in East Anglia, Rebecca and Two Magpies Bakery have grown to become emblematic of modern baking in the area. This growth included the opening of the hugely popular Two Magpies Bake School in 2019. An experienced and empathetic teacher, Rebecca shares her love of baking with hundreds of enthusiastic pupils every month.
In 2023, a decade after the doors first opened, Rebecca’s first book ‘Two Magpies Bakery – stories and recipes from East Anglia’ is released by Headline Books. It draws on her experience of following her dream to open that very first bakery, and what she has learnt on her journey to become an accomplished and successful baker and food writer.
You can follow her on instagram @thenextloaf for instructional and inspiring videos and recipes.
Photo: India Hobson
East Coast College Students
East Coast College offers students a 3 year Hospitality and Catering course with a range of career opportunities. The course is for anyone who wants to improve their skills and knowledge in professional cookery or front of house roles.
Students that have completed Professional Cookery Level 3 have also progressed to the Edge Hotel School at the University of Essex.
Work experience is part of the course and previous students have worked for Tom Kerridge, Jamie Oliver and Raymond Blanc, as well as many prominent hospitality venues in the Norfolk and Suffolk.
