She’s graduated from restaurant critic to a bona fide TV star in charge of revamping scandal-hit MasterChef — but has Grace Dent gone and got grand? Not a bit of it…
Back in the mists of 2011, Grace Dent received an email from Andy Barker, then the editor of ES Magazine. She had recently written a funny piece defending the classic London greasy spoon from the onslaught of hipster cafés. Barker needed someone to cover the restaurant column following an abrupt departure. “She had such a singular voice and hilarious turn of phrase,” he recalls. Would she mind stepping in for a couple of weeks?
Dent did not mind. In fact, sashaying in and out of restaurants, dispensing critiques from on high like a glam northern Michael Winner, was precisely the sort of notoriety she had always dreamed of. “I was like, I am never giving the job up,” Dent says. “My entire career has been people saying: ‘Could you possibly step in for a little bit while we work out somebody posh who is more suitable for this job?’ Then they’re like: ‘Shit! She’s really good and she’s built an audience!’” She pauses and laughs some more. “Oh my God! It still happens now!”
The difference is, it happens in slightly more elevated surroundings than, say, Roofnic on Oxford Street, site of one early review (“I would rather fall off this roof to my death than go here again”). I am speaking to Dent not long after the conclusion of her first full series as a co-presenter of the revamped MasterChef alongside Irish chef Anna Haugh. The BBC’s flagship cookery show was in dire need of a reset following the sundry disgraces of the Torode-Wallace regime. Gregg Wallace and John Torode were both fired in July last year: Wallace following allegations of inappropriate conduct, and Torode over alleged racist language.
Dent and Haugh have not only banished memories of those two tedious men, but also vastly improved the show in all departments — not least the wardrobe department, with Dent generally opting to channel Fanny Cradock by way of Studio 54 (or maybe Area 51). “I want to bring joy to television,” is her philosophy. “Life is too bloody serious.”
Still, I was concerned that Our Grace might be getting a little too grand following her bump in status from admired restaurant critic to national celebrity who people now recognise when she’s jogging through Epping Forest. I can’t help noticing that her Instagram account now refers to “Grace Dent” in the third person. We were initially booked in for lunch at Café Clement, which Dent was reviewing for the Guardian — only she cancelled at the last minute, so here we are on Microsoft Teams instead. As she logs on, a warning pops up on her screen. “‘They may not be seeing you as you see yourself’,” she reads. “That’s quite a philosophical message,” she says. “I don’t know quite what to do with it!”
”People assume I want all the restaurants I review to close”
Actually, she proves funny, likeable and razor-sharp — that singular voice intact. “I basically look like a claymation witch, so people assume I want all the restaurants I review to close,” she says of her reputation for meanness. In reality, she says, she wants nothing more than everyone to succeed — and it is the genuine warmth and interest in people that she and Haugh have brought to MasterChef that has been the real difference.
“I’d done a few series [as guest critic] by the time I came in to do this one — and I had a very clear vision of what I wanted to do,” she says. “It was for it to be glam, funny, warm and camp. I really wanted to drill down on the contestant, so we really learned who they were. Everyone got supported but everyone got criticised.”
If she now occasionally refers to herself in the third person — well, it’s simply because she finds it funny. She hoots when I ask if she now has someone doing her social media for her. No, like everything else, posts such as “Five more revolting restaurants I will never eat in” (accompanied by carousels of outfits) are something she puts a lot of thought and work into getting just right.
In a sense, she feels her career has been leading to this point. “There’s still lots of people saying: ‘Who is Grace Dent? Where has she come from?’ But I feel like I’ve been working hard for 25 years to have this kind of success.” The daughter of a dinner lady and an engineer, Dent was raised in a close-knit working-class family in Carlisle — apparently on a diet of Bird’s Eye potato waffles, Morrissey lyrics, punk TV and windswept caravan holidays. She remains fascinated by the idea of comfort food as a portal into the past: the tastes that survive long after childhood bedrooms have disappeared and parents have gone.
“Now I’m this Billy Big Bollocks I can rock up to all the fancy patisseries. But I hanker after rocky road”
In fact, when I ask about the best thing she’s eaten recently, she cites a rocky road from a church fete. (Dent leads a relatively quiet life out in rural Essex with her long-term partner Charlie when she’s not filming; I’m pleased she still finds time to attend church fetes). “This is clearly a recipe that has been passed down through six Brown Owls,” she says. “It was written on the back of a gas bill from 1981. It’s Stork margarine, glacé cherries, Golden Syrup and some old Corn Flakes — but together, it’s so British, it’s so perfect. Now I’m this Billy Big Bollocks I can rock up to all the fancy patisseries. But really I’m always hankering after that rocky road.”
Her first job when she arrived in London from Cumbria in the 1990s was at Marie Claire. “I was absolutely the lowest of the low there. I cannot watch Ugly Betty because to me it was a documentary.” She wrote young adult novels and worked her way into the Guardian Guide, where she wrote about soaps before taking over the main TV column from Charlie Brooker.
From here, she segued into restaurant reviewing, first at the Standard and then back at the Guardian — and meanwhile developed a broadcasting career. She has presented the delightful real-life documentary series The Untold on Radio 4, has been a guest critic on MasterChef for many years and even did a stint on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here in 2023 before leaving on medical grounds. “I’m really glad I did it because I never have to do it ever again. It’s like national service.”
