Hairy Bikers head to Stathern local

The Red Lion Inn at Stathern saw a slice of real live TV action last week on Friday, 1st May, when the roar of the Hairy Bikers’ motorbikes echoed through the quiet country village in deepest Leicestershire for a whole day’s filming with the Michelin-starred owner/chef, Sean Hope, for their new BBC2 TV series to be transmitted nationwide this coming Autumn.

And from Bank Holiday Monday (4th May) onwards, the Red Lion will be featuring Sean’s ‘Taste of Leicestershire’ dish that he devised for the Hairy Bikers cook-off on their daily menu, although the result of the contest will remain a closely guarded secret until shown on TV later in the year.

The popular Hairy Bikers, Dave Myers and Si King, both from the North of England, had contacted Sean Hope earlier this year to ask him to be part of their new series, in which they saddle up and visit many counties in the country, but deep snow prevented the filming at the time and it had to be postponed until Friday, 1st May.

The filming with Sean at the Red Lion Inn is part of a nationwide tour by the Hairies that will take them from one end of the British Isles to the other, and cover all points of the compass. In each county they visit, the Hairy Bikers will create their own dish from locally sourced ingredients and they’ll go head-to-head with a home-grown chef in a cook-off in each place, in this case, Sean at the Red Lion in Stathern, who cooked ‘Pork Faggots, Cider fondant potato, Peas & broad beans’ as his own ‘Taste of Leicestershire’ dish’.

All of the ingredients used by Sean for this dish came from local suppliers (pork from Debbie Green’s Farm in Scalford, cider from the ‘Thirsty Farmer’ in Little Dalby, potatoes from a local farm and peas and broad beans from the Red Lion’s own kitchen garden) so that the freshest possible produce was used on the day.

The team at the Red Lion Inn, lead by owner Marcus Welford, will present some superb local ales to accompany Sean’s dish. It was thes passion shown by the team at the Red Lion Inn for using local produce that brought The Hairies to Stathern, in the glorious Vale of Belvoir for their new TV programme to be shown this Autumn.

Over the course of this fascinating daily series, The Hairy Bikers, Dave and Si, will create a new ‘food map’ of Britain on which the Red Lion Inn at Stathern will be marked as their favourite in the county of Leicestershire.

Hurry along to the Red Lion Inn at Stathern from Bank Holiday Monday onwards to enjoy Sean Hope’s own ‘Taste of Leicestershire’ dish and then keep a look out this Autumn for the start of the new series on BBC2, to see the results of the filming last week.