It took one 6ft halibut from Iceland (the country!), 60kg of potatoes and 40cans of lager (for beer batter) for the team of six from the Urban Beach Hotel and Urban Reef Restaurant to win their ‘monster’ challenge! Earlier this year the Urban team were invited to take part in the Good Food TV channel’s ‘Monster Munchies’ programme. The group went up against Bournemouth and Poole College and were tasked with the creating a super sized portion of the much loved British seaside dish, fish and chips. Both teams were followed by a TV crew for 24 hours as they went about preparing and cooking their ingredients. Retired English rugby player Matt Dawson presented the show and visited each team throughout the 24 hours to see how they were getting on. At the end of the 24 hours both dishes were judged in Bournemouth Town Centre by a panel of five judges on their size, presentation and taste. The boys from Bournemouth and Poole College won the ‘size’ category, while the Urban team claimed the ‘presentation’ and ‘taste’ titles, making them the overall winners and the proud owners of the Monster Munchies ‘golden spoon’. Urban owner Mark Cribb said: “Making a massive portion of fish and chips was certainly an experience – not something you get asked to do every day! We love a challenge so completed quite a lot of research into whether this kind of thing had been done before. We found that a world record had in fact been set in Yorkshire, and our dish certainly rivals this! “We’re chuffed to have won and had great fun taking part. The college were good sports too.” Once judging had commenced members of the public were invited to try each dish and food was also donated to a local homeless shelter. If you missed the programme you’ll be able to catch it again on: 19/11 at 9am on Good Food, 21/11 at 8am and 2pm on Good Food, 26/12 at 12pm on Good Food, 04/01 at 1pm on Good Food.
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