The Gentle, Comforting Allure of 1990s Food TV
Remembering a time when Two Fat Ladies, Delia Smith and Rick Stein ruled the airwaves
When I was around 14 years old, I became mildly obsessed with cooking shows.
It was the late nineties and for me, a time of significant personal upheaval. My parents had just moved my family from Norfolk to North Wales which meant starting a new school at one of the worst ages to do so. I was emerging from a pattern of disordered eating (one of the reasons we moved, in fact).
It’s interesting therefore that food TV held such appeal for me at this time, but it did. I would sit in front of my tiny TV in my new bedroom, hundreds of miles from anyone I knew, adjusting the hoop aerial to catch cooking show re-runs on my four-channelled TV.
Delia Smith, Two Fat Ladies, Rick Stein, I loved them all.
If you’re not from Britain these names may not mean much to you, but these TV chefs were our Martha Stewart, Ina Garten, and Julia Child. The old school.
The shows were slow. Gentle. I’ve watched a few YouTube reruns in research for this story and the pace is much calmer than we’re used to in 2025. There's a scene in the Two Fat Ladies for instance where Clarissa and Jennifer talk about cooking sweetbreads and testicles (of all things) in a single 50-second shot. They’re not even talking to the camera, we just see their backs as they sit in their famous motorcycle and sidecar.
With my 2025-tinged attention span, it’s difficult to watch something so unmoving for so long.
Last night, I certainly felt the jarring gentle pace of the shows. But I felt something else too.
A huge wave of nostalgia. The second Delia Smith’s Winter Collection theme tune came through the speakers, I had vivid memories of watching the show. I could remember every animated shot of the opening credits. I even remember Delia’s instructions on how to identify a ripe Camembert.
Instructions I still use today.
Some of these shows are so deeply embedded in my brain that I can almost recite them word for word. Something I doubt I can do with anything I’ve watched in the last 10 years, as TV has become louder, more fast-paced, and more attention-robbing. Despite watching Guy Fieri’s Drive-in, Diners and Dives every morning before work during my wine store years for instance — years far more recent than Delia’s Winter Collection —I don’t remember a single episode.
There was a gentle allure to these older shows. A comforting quietness to them. But rewatching them today, I’m struck by how different these chefs were to me and my upbringing.
How did I connect so deeply with them when their lives were so different from mine?
1990s British TV was filled with well-to-do personalities of an old-school ilk. People with privilege. Money. Very good schooling. Food TV was no exception.
Clarrissa Dickson Wright of the Two Fat Ladies — Americans, you may know her, apparently she made it big stateside — has one of the most startling full names I’ve ever come across:
Clarissa Theresa Philomena Aileen Mary Josephine Agnes Elsie Trilby Louise Esmerelda Johnston Dickson Wright.
Tell me you’re well-to-do without telling me you’re well-to-do.
She’s not the only one. Similar to Martha Stewart, Delia Smith filmed her Winter Collection series at her impressive home complete with huge country garden and a kitchen big enough to fit in a film crew.
Rick Stein’s schooling included the very prestigious Uppingham School.
My upbringing was very different to those TV personalities. I went to my local state school. I lived in a small house in a small town. Vacations tended to be of the caravan type, my first abroad holiday being a package to Greece when I was 16.
I couldn’t especially relate to the lives of the TV chefs I looked up to. But like the recent Martha Stewart documentary showed, part of the allure of these shows isn’t that these chefs are the same as you but that you aspire to be like them.
One of the reasons I loved Rick Stein was because he travelled all over the world. I wanted to travel all over the world! I wanted to eat in India, Thailand, France — instead of being stuck in my North Wales bedroom.
I had no means to eat my way around the world, so Rick had to do it for me.
And Delia’s house? Maybe if I work as hard as she does, I thought, I could also buy a mansion and live my days cooking in a beautiful kitchen.
These shows aired at a time when society was obsessed with stories of people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. I was told time and again as a teenager that I could do anything I wanted if I worked hard enough for it.
If I wanted to travel the world like Rick, I could! If I wanted Delia’s house, I could earn enough to buy it!
I know better now. I know that to watch these shows through the lens of aspiration is a fool’s errand because their lives are not my own, nor will they ever be. I have some privilege and education yes, but it’s far from theirs. I’m probably never going to get Delia’s house, not that I wasnt it anymore (although I still wouldn’t mind Rick Stein’s travel budget).
And I know now that’s OK. It’s the food I’m more interested in anyway.
I hope you enjoy reading The Sauce as much as I enjoy writing it. This is a reader-supported publication. Your paid subscriptions mean I have the time to research and write about food culture as an independent entity. No #sponcon, just a whole lot of commentary about how food and drink fit into modern society.
Re-watching some of these shows, I’m struck by one more thing.
They’re made of substance.
Delia teaches you how to properly poach an egg. The Two Fat Ladies champion using local meat and vegetables. In Rick Stein’s Spain, Rick visits some genuinely good quality bars and restaurants.
Sure, there are some issues, not least the very white, middle-class, British spin put on many recipes. Delia talks about making a recipe “Spanish” by adding…chopped bell pepper. The Two Fat Ladies make a “pan Asian” sauce for a fillet of beef by mixing up everything from a 1990s Sainsbury’s world food aisle.
And Rick Stein? Well
— in an article that inspired this one — recently pointed out how patronising he could be:It’s as if he’s spawned directly from the pages of Kim, striding forth among the natives like a low-level colonial functionary, with his public-school accent and crumpled button-down, seemingly completely unaware of just how patronising he is to the people he meets and about the food they make.
These shows were certainly of their time, but that doesn’t mean the food they made wasn’t worth making. For my part, once my eating habits returned to a semblance of normal, these shows taught me how flavours worked. They made me beg my mother to buy soy sauce and fresh coriander so I could try my hand at an “Asian” dish. Something I would never have done without shows like those.
They were genuinely educational and I genuinely learned from them. We didn’t have a VHS recorder, so I would furiously scribble down the recipes so I could recreate them — a least a version of them — with whatever substitutes I could find in my kitchen.
Without these 90s and 00s TV chefs, I probably wouldn’t be who I am today, working in food and wine. They were the start of something 14-year-old me could have never foreseen.
For that, I will always be grateful for the likes of Delia, Rick and the Two Fat Ladies.
I still use my Delia cookbooks when I need a thorough explanation of something basic. That’s what she did well - detail.
Yes it was a great era for cookery shows. Great piece.
I love Rick Stein. He both looks and sounds a whole lot like my dad, who is also obsessed with food. Thanks for reminding me of both of them - your article made me feel very nostalgic!