Ferryhill chef is cooking up a storm

Jun 14 2009 by Michael Kelly, Sunday Sun

IT might be over- egging the pudding to say it was a comment on a par with the man from the Decca record label who turned down the Beatles, but the irony is certainly one to savour.

Shaun Rankin, now one of the country’s top chefs, was mucking about in the home economics class of his local comprehensive school with a pal when his teacher, Mrs Curtis, turned on him.

Shaun recalls with a chuckle: “She said you’ll never make it in the catering industry.”

Fast forward about 25 years and Mrs Curtis, if she is alive today, would be eating her words.

And tasty words they would be too if they came out of her former pupil’s kitchen.

For Shaun, 37, who was raised in Ferryhill, County Durham, is head chef at the Bohemia restaurant at The Club Hotel & Spa in Jersey. Recently he beat competition from chefs around the country in the TV programme Great British menu to win the right to make the dessert course for a banquet in honour of British troops returning from Afghanistan.

In the same programme another North chef, Kenny Atkinson, came out top to prepare the starter.

“Me and Kenny got on like a house on fire. It was a great result for the North,” said Shaun.

Despite being based in Jersey since 1994 there is still a reassuring County Durham twang to his accent - and not an “F” word was heard during our conversation. However, Ferryhill doesn’t seem the most obvious of places for a top chef to come from.

“You could say that,” conceded Shaun. “I got into cooking through my mum, Judith. I used to help her with the Sunday lunch or making pies for different fetes or church events. It’s how I knew what I wanted to do when I left school which I did at 16.”