As November draws to a close, we’re excited to share the month’s highlights from Great British Game Week 2024. From competitions and cooking classes to presentations, talks and webinars , the Nation has embraced the bounty of wild British game this November.
Kicking off with Great British Game Week 2024, with a good luck message from ‘Rivals’ star Danny Dyer, we knew that this year was going to be good. Starting with our Fiver for the Future Silent Auction in partnership with the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, with prizes donated by some wonderful supporters, such as a Three Course Lunch at Joshua Hunter Restaurant at Holland & Holland, a whole deer from Ragley Estate Butchers and a days clay shooting and game butchery at Vale House Kitchen, to name a few. It is thanks to our wonderful supporters that we raised funds to be split between GWCT and Eat Wild. And it is campaigns like this that help us to continue the valuable work that we do for the future of the British Countryside and our way of life.
Leon and I starred in an online cook-along on the first evening of Game Week, which was well attended and had mouths watering, making succulent and crispy pheasant Kievs with Mustard Mash and Seasonal Greens.
Two fabulously food orientated days followed on Wednesday the 6th of November with finalists from the pioneering, Eat Wild and Craft Guild of Chefs competition visiting Oakland Park, where they were treated to a full tour of their impressive and busy game processing facility. The importance of integrating sustainable and locally-sourced ingredients into culinary training was highlighted whilst discussing different species of wild game meat, where it comes from and how it is handled after harvest, encouraging the young chefs to consider the broader environmental impact of their ingredient choices, from sourcing to final presentation. Attended by Chef Patron, Mark Kempson of Kitchen W8, Leon Challis-Davies of Eat Wild and Pivotal Foods, Ian Page, Young Chef Ambassador for Craft Guild of Chefs and Mark Reynolds, Chair of the Craft Guild of Chefs, who judged the first round of entrants and got to join the final five on their tour and discussions.
Oakland Park provided some of their fabulous Wild Boar and Venison Sausages and Venison Burgers for everyone before they left for Devon and tried to relax before the final cook-off the next day.
Thursday the 7th of November – found finalists and Judges, Mark Reynolds, Ian Page, Matthew Marshall of RAC Club, London, and Harriet Mansell, Executive Chef at Lilac Restaurant and Wine Bar and a keen forager and wild food chef, outside the doors of The Ground Up Cookery School in Devon.
Colin Wheeler-James, Culinary Director of the cookery school, forager and fermenter, kicked the day off with a foraging session, encouraging everyone to taste different herbs and berries found locally to the school and to collect any ingredients needed for their dishes. Then it was time to cook and present their dishes to the Judges.
Our winning chef, Jude Bell from Poole and Bournemouth College produced an unbelievable wild boar, harissa scotch egg with black garlic, which was full of flavour and left the judges wanting to eat the entire dish, along with a sumptuous and decadent, pulled wild rabbit burger with Pico de Gallo, mole sauce and lettuce in a Parker-House bun. I suspect we will be seeing a lot more of this young man in the future.
This competition was an enormous success and our goal is to encourage the next wave of chefs to appreciate the unique qualities of British game—its support of biodiversity, its high welfare, and its positive impact on our countryside. No other protein does what game meat does for the environment and the way to make a change is through the younger generations.
While Leon was overseeing the last day of the competition, I was up at the Kirkstyle Inn and Sportsmans Rest, talking to 78 of their patrons about Eat Wild and the benefits of eating locally sourced wild meat, whilst they were enjoying a spectacular 5 course Wild Feast cooked up using their own game by Head Chef Connor Wilson.
It truly was one of the best Game Weeks we have experienced, with over 37,000 views of our Instagram account over the course of the week, over 1100 accounts interacting with Game Week content and nearly 90,000 views of our Instagram account since Game Week ended. I will tentatively say that the tide is turning and people are opening up to the many positives of cooking and eating wild meat.
In other non-Game Week news, Delaware North, a global catering service which serves in Wembley Stadium, London Stadium and West Ham, Emirates Stadium and Arsenal, and Pride Park Stadium and Derby County, are set to roll out wild meat innovations such as wild venison sausages, burgers and wild meat pies across all their stadiums in 2025. This means another four million new people with wild meat choices on their menus per year, a tremendous boon for the game industry I think we can all agree.
Finally, in a month of incredible movement for the wild meat markets, Essential Cuisine has announced their Pub Chef of the Year 2025 Competition is open for entries, and it is placing wild meat at its center. This unique competition, takes place on Wednesday, 19th March 2025, at the prestigious International Salon Culinaire at ExCeL London, invites chefs from pub kitchens across the UK to showcase their creativity with game.This is a fantastic spotlight on British game, and it is truly wonderful to see this fabulous, sustainable source of protein taking its rightful place in culinary competitions.