The Go To Food Podcast

The Go To Food Podcast

The Go-To Food Podcast is where the world’s most influential chefs, restaurateurs, food writers and critics share the stories behind their craft. Hosted by award-winning presenter Freddy Clode and chef and food writer Ben Benton, this weekly show dives deep into the experiences, inspirations, and “Go-To” favourites that define a life in food. From hidden gems to the restaurants they return to time and again, each episode serves up intrigue, insight, and the untold moments that shaped their journey. With food and drink inspired by their stories, expect stories from the food world, insider knowledge, and a true celebration of food culture at its finest.

Episodes

October 29, 2026 • 79 mins
How did Dishoom go from an empty restaurant in Covent Garden to one of Britain's most successful and sought-after restaurant empires, with customers queuing for THREE HOURS just to get a table? This week on The Go-To Food Podcast, we're joined by **Dishoom co-founder Kavi Thakrar** to uncover the extraordinary story behind the Indian restaurant phenomenon that's transformed British dining. From watching customers queue outside Ja...
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From selling homemade pâté at a market in Cork to becoming one of Ireland’s best-loved chefs and television personalities, Clodagh McKenna has had an extraordinary journey. This week, Clodagh joins Freddy and Ben to share some of the wildest stories from her career, including how she managed to shut down New York, partying with Bob Geldof, the reality of life on television and the people who helped shape her love of food. W...
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After two years of chasing him, we've finally got him! This week we're joined by the brilliant Matt Tebbutt, Saturday Kitchen presenter, former MasterChef judge and one of Britain's best-loved TV chefs, for an outrageously funny and revealing conversation over lunch at Café François. And what a career he's had. Matt takes us back to the wild days of London's great kitchens, including working under Marco Pierre White, who once pre...
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Chef feuds, restaurant gossip, outrageous rumours and a rather reluctant Thomas Straker... Welcome to the Go-To Food gossip show! To celebrate the launch of our brand-new Patreon, we're giving you a FREE taste of our exclusive weekly gossip round-up, where we discuss everything happening behind the scenes in the food world. Coming to you from Coombeshead Farm in Cornwall, we're spilling the beans on our complicated relationship w...
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Why would one of London's most exciting bakeries refuse to sell croissants? This week on the Go To Food Podcast, we're joined by the brilliant Anna Higham, the acclaimed pastry chef behind Quince Bakery and the brand-new Clementine. Having worked in some of the world's most celebrated kitchens, including New York's Gramercy Tavern, Lyle's, Flor and The River Café, Anna has become one of the most exciting voices in British baking....
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Jean-Georges Vongerichten is one of the most influential chefs of all time. From revolutionising New York's restaurant scene to building an empire of around 60 restaurants across the world, his career has been nothing short of extraordinary. But behind the Michelin stars and iconic restaurants are some truly unbelievable stories. This week, Jean-Georges joins us to reveal what it was really like cooking Donald Trump's wedding, wh...
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How do you turn a humble jacket potato into one of Britain's biggest viral food sensations? This week we're joined by the one and only Spudman, the man behind Britain's most famous jacket potatoes, to uncover the extraordinary story of how he built his potato empire. From queues stretching for hours and millions of followers around the world to earning £40,000 a month through TikTok and turning down a staggering £1 million offer...
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Dylan Jones has spent more than four decades at the heart of British culture, from i-D and The Face to GQ, the Evening Standard and some of London’s most legendary dining rooms. In this episode, Dylan joins us to talk about the wild years of 80s, 90s and noughties London, from The Groucho Club, The Ivy and Le Caprice to David Bowie, Robbie Williams, Boris Johnson and the extraordinary overlap between restaurants, fashion, mus...
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Today we're joined by one of the most important figures in modern Italian cooking in Britain, Jacob Kenedy, chef and co-founder of the legendary Bocca di Lupo and Gelupo. Jacob's journey is anything but conventional. Before becoming a chef he studied science, was a glassblower and a DJ, before a stint at Moro changed the course of his life and eventually led him to create the restaurant he simply wanted to exist in London. Jacob t...
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Between Robert Reid and Jean-Christophe “JC” Slowik, you have nearly 80 years of extraordinary restaurant history. From Roger Vergé and Raymond Blanc to Marco Pierre White, Harvey’s, The Oak Room and some of the defining restaurants of&n...
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🔥 Two of the most exciting names in London restaurants join us this week as David Carter and Sertaç Dirik reveal the story behind KID, their hugely anticipated new Turkish restaurant in Soho. David has built an extraordinary run of restaurants including Smokestak, Manteca, OMA and AGORA, while Sertaç transformed his family restaurant Mangal II into one of London’s most acclaimed dining rooms. Now, after nearly three years of...
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In his first interview since his shock departure from MasterChef, John Torode joins us for an exclusive and deeply personal conversation about the end of his extraordinary 20-year run on the show. He reveals whether he was surprised by how it all came to an end, reflects on what MasterChef meant to him and the thousands of people involved in making it, and explains why, despite everything, he is determined to hold on to his “...
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We travelled to the shores of Loch Fyne to sit down with the brilliant Pam Brunton, chef and co-owner of Inver, one of Scotland’s most remarkable restaurants and the first in the country to receive a Michelin Green Star. Pam’s extraordinary career has taken her from dropping out of Edinburgh University to cook on Scotland’s west coast, through the kitchens of Tom Aikens and The Greenhouse, before stages at Noma, F...
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Lorna McNee joins us at Cail Bruich to tell the remarkable story behind becoming the chef who brought a Michelin star back to Glasgow for the first time in 18 years. She takes us from washing pots in a small Italian restaurant and a teenage stage at Gordon Ramsay, to walking into Andrew Fairlie’s legendary two-Michelin-starred kitchen as an apprentice and immediately wondering whether she was good enough. Lorna spent the next...
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This week we’re joined by one of the most influential chefs of his generation, Josh Niland, the Australian chef who has completely changed the way the restaurant world thinks about fish. Josh tells us why our obsession with ultra-fresh fish may actually be holding us back, how learning to treat fish more like meat transformed his cooking, and why a piece of advice from legendary fish chef Stephen Hodges changed the course of ...
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Welcome to a special edition of Go-To Food where Freddy and Ben ditch the guest and get into the industry gossip, rumours and behind-the-scenes stories that normally don’t make it onto the podcast. From the guests we’ve chased for years, the interviews that nearly never happened, awkward encounters with some very famous chefs and what really goes on before and after the microphones are switched on, we’re spilling ...
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This week we’re joined by Jack Coggins, the chef behind Goodbye Horses, Stable Wines and The Dreamery, for a brilliant journey through one of the most unconventional careers in London food. Jack started helping out in an East London café at just 12, studied English with dreams of becoming a food writer, then found himself unable to afford the entry-level jobs in publishing and instead earning his living in kitchens. We hear a...
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Gordon Ramsay told Aktar Islam he needed to break free. What followed changed his life and helped set him on the path to two Michelin stars — and now he wants a third. In this episode of The Go-To Food Podcast, we sit down with Aktar Islam, one of the most influential figures in modern British Indian cooking, for a brilliantly candid conversation about ambition, Michelin stars, Gordon Ramsay, the British curry house and the b...
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After seven years of residencies and pop-ups, Whole Beast have finally found a permanent home on Coldharbour Lane — and Sam and Alicja join us to tell the gloriously chaotic story of how they got there. They reveal how working for other people eventually reached breaking point — from having menus rewritten around them to being asked to start making pastries — until they stood outside one day, said “fuck it&r...
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This week we’re inside Tavern, one of London’s most talked-about new openings, from the team behind Michelin-starred Restaurant St Barts. After almost a decade of Nest, they explain why they decided two tasting-menu restaurants no longer made sense, why restaurants increasingly seem to need to be either brand new or about to close to get people excited, and how they’ve tried to build something more affordable, ene...
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