A Dish Is Finished When There's Nothing Left to Take Away: James Brown on Judging, Food Trends, and Why Care Catering Is Harder Than Anyone Thinks
James Brown grew up in Cornwall collecting lobsters from the harbour and running them up to the kitchen. He's since worked in Michelin-starred restaurants, overseen multi-site chains, and is now Group Executive Chef for UK and Ireland at Unilever Food Solutions — travelling to China, New York and Singapore to research global food trends, and judging competitions from Ireland to the NACC Care Chef of the Year.
In this episode he talks about what makes care catering harder than any other sector, what separates a great competition entry from an average one, and why if you're on the fence about entering, you should just go for it.
James Brown started cooking because his mum was at work and he needed money during the school summer holidays in Cornwall. He got the bug, started skipping lessons for shifts, went to catering college, and built a career that took him from a brasserie and grill by the harbour through Michelin-starred kitchens, high-volume casual dining groups, and eventually a role at Restaurant Associates overseeing Citibank's UK and Ireland operations for Compass. Then a new baby, a move to the countryside, and an opportunity at Unilever Food Solutions that finally made sense of everything he'd done before.
In this episode, host Rob Spence asks James what it's actually like to come into the care sector fresh — with no preconceptions but also no knowledge. His answer is honest and generous. He expected it to be simpler. What he found was that the demands placed on a care chef are phenomenally harder than anything he'd imagined: dietary requirements, modified textures, dysphagia diets, choking hazards, shrinking appetites, the need to pack calories into every mouthful. Chefs often working alone. And all of that alongside producing food that's genuinely delicious, culturally relevant, and increasingly reflective of a multicultural resident population that's starting to want authentic regional curries, not just shepherd's pie.
It's that complexity, he says, that makes the Care Chef of the Year stand out as a competition. These chefs have to think about whether a dish can be purified without losing its identity, whether the provenance and sustainability of an ingredient holds up, whether the flavour will land for someone whose taste buds have diminished with age. And they think about all of that instinctively — it's ingrained. James finds himself learning as a judge every time.
His judging advice to anyone entering is borrowed from fashion: a dish isn't finished when there's nothing more to add, it's finished when there's nothing left to take away.
Everything on the plate must earn its place. And his encouragement to anyone sitting on the fence is simple — you're not really competing against anyone else. If you go in with a view to competing with yourself, you can't lose. You'll come out more organised, sharper under pressure, and part of a community that will stay with you.
Subscribe wherever you listen — and if you're still umming and ahhing about entering the Care Chef of the Year, consider this your nudge.
To learn about The National Association of Care Catering, please visit: https://www.thenacc.co.uk/
A massive thank you to the Sponsors of the Care Chef of the Year:
The Worshipful Company of Cooks
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