The doors to the HFI hub are open! Ten rookie cooks set off on the ultimate crash course for how to make it in the food business.
Peckham in south east London is home to the Hungry for It hub, and the purpose-built professional kitchens are where the cooks meet for the first time. In the staff room, Stacey tells them about the grand prize for winning: 'The last cook standing will have a trip around the world working in some of the most incredible restaurants.'
The cooks then meet their mentors: grime artist and TV cook Big Zuu, who was first discovered on YouTube and is entirely self-taught, and Kayla Greer, a private chef from LA whose celebrity clients include Drake, P Diddy, Demi Lovato and Justin Bieber.
The mentors set their first challenge called the Level Up, where the cooks have to transform ordinary food into extraordinary dishes. To celebrate their arrival at the hub, the theme today is party food, and the cooks must each create their own fresh twist on a party food favourite.
The next day, the cooks take on their first Service Challenge – to serve up a menu of burgers to 100 hungry diners. The cooks who most impressed in the Level Up work in Kayla's upmarket restaurant kitchen, where they are safe from elimination. The others fight for survival in Big Zuu's pop-up, where they must bang out street food to a larger number of diners.
When service is over, Kayla picks her prize-winner, and Big Zuu chooses the cook who he thinks should go into the Knives Out elimination. But the pop-up cooks are shocked to discover that they have to vote to determine who takes the other spot.
In the Knives Out challenge, the bottom two cooks must make a stack of light and fluffy matcha pancakes in just 15 minutes, after which for one cook, the contest comes to an end.
