Profile

Biography

Tessa Bramley is chef/patron of the highly acclaimed Old Vicarage restaurant at the village of Ridgeway outside Sheffield which was awarded a Michelin star in the 1999 guide.

Tessa is a self-taught chef, whose food is bursting with flavour. It is real county cooking, made with the freshest of ingredients, many of the vegetables, herbs and fruits coming from her own kitchen garden. She says: "I want to show people that cooking is a lot of fun…. And that the rules are there to be bent according to your own individual style."

Her innovative modern menus mixes British and Mediterranean influences with those from even further afield to earn her high marks in The Good Food Guide. In 1995 she was awarded two stars by the Egon Ronay Guide - one of only six restaurants to achieve this status outside London. The 1997 Egon Ronay awarded the Old Vicarage the Dessert of the Year Award. Kit Chapman devoted a chapter to Tessa, her life and her cooking, in his book Great British Chefs 2.

Tessa was selected by Channel 4 to be a regular presenter on its daytime cookery series Here's One I Made Earlier, which ran for two series. Each programme demonstrated a three course menu which is imaginative and simple to prepare.

She was a featured chef in Robert Carrier's TV series, which was broadcast as a strand on ITV's This Morning. She has featured on BBC's Food & Drink programme, MasterChef, Channels 4's Light Lunch and she has filmed three of her own series for Carlton Food Network: Country Cooking (13 parts), Tessa Bramley's Seasonal Kitchen (26 parts) and Tessa's Tastebuds (40 parts).

Her first book, The Instinctive Cook, was published in the Autumn of 1995 by Merehurst. Classic Puddings (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) and A Taste of Tradition (HarperCollins) were published in spring 1997. Her latest books Casseroles and Puddings were recently published by Ryland Peters & Small.