Great British Menu (GBM) returned to our screens on 24 February 2026 for season 21. The BBC2 show puts the nation’s most talented chefs to the test. At Women in the Food Industry we are continuing our series of interviews with the strong female line-up of chefs from across Britain competing to serve their dish at the final banquet. Our co-founder, Mecca Ibrahim, interviewed Marion Lancial Head Chef of Le Cheval Noir, a modern French bistro within The Dark Horse in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter.
Originally from Normandy, Marion began her culinary journey in her grandmother’s restaurant, an early influence that has shaped her 20-year career.
How did you start working in the food industry? And where did you train to be a chef?
I actually came to cooking quite late – being a chef wasn’t my first career at all. I originally studied journalism and then worked on the business side of the music and art industries. After that I retrained as a graphic designer. I kept changing direction because nothing seemed to hold my interest for very long.
Food, though, had always been part of my life. My grandmother ran a restaurant and hotel in Normandy, so I grew up around kitchens and hospitality. When she became ill and came to live with us for a while, I started cooking with her, trying to recreate some of her recipes and make dishes she would enjoy eating. That was really the moment when something clicked for me.
At the time I was also a regular at a restaurant just across the road from where I lived in Rouen. I was there so often that one day the chef came out and said, “You’re here all the time – you clearly love food. Why don’t you come and work with us?” It was a beautiful fine dining restaurant, and that was how it all began, almost 20 years ago now.
Afterwards I went on to train at L’Escoffier, where I focused particularly on pastry. That’s where I did all of my formal pastry training.
This is your first time on Great British Menu, how did you get onto the show and prepare for the British Movies theme?
Getting the message about Great British Menu was a complete surprise. I received a text on Instagram and, to be honest, my first thought was that it must be a scam. It didn’t feel real at all.
A couple of weeks later I met pastry chef Gemma Austin for the first time. She’s an incredible chef who runs her own restaurant and hosts amazing pop-ups. During our conversation she asked if I had any exciting news lately and hinted that it might be TV-related. That’s when I realised she was the one who had recommended me for the show. She had competed on Great British Menu several times herself and done brilliantly, so it meant a lot that she thought of me. I’m incredibly grateful to her – and I love seeing women in the industry supporting other women like that.
Preparing for the British Movies theme was quite a challenge. I’m a pastry chef by background and although I’m now head chef at The Dark Horse, the food we do there is more French bistro and gastropub style. It’s not the kind of highly technical, elaborate plating you often see on the show. So I trained really intensely for about four months, working hard to develop techniques and ideas that I hadn’t explored much before.
I think everyone prepares obsessively when they know they’re going onto Great British Menu. For me there was definitely a lot of pressure – I was quite nervous and probably more focused on the fear of failure than the excitement at times. But the preparation pushed me to learn so much, both about new techniques and about what I was capable of achieving. It was an incredible experience.
It’s your first time on Great British Menu. How did you find working in the studio with all the cameras and crew?
It’s quite a surreal experience at first. When you walk into the studio kitchen and see the famous fork, knife and spoon on the wall, it really hits you that you’re on Great British Menu. It’s a bit overwhelming.
But the crew are incredible and they make the whole experience feel very welcoming. You can tell they all know each other well and genuinely enjoy working together, which creates such a positive atmosphere. From the moment you arrive they’re checking if you need anything, making sure you’re comfortable and that everything is taken care of. It almost feels like being wrapped in a little cocoon where you can just focus on cooking.
Of course, having so many cameras around you is something you’re not used to. At first you try to keep a bit of a poker face and act as if everything is completely normal, even though inside you might be feeling all sorts of emotions. It’s definitely intense.
But once I stepped into the kitchen, I told myself to let go of the fear. I had prepared as much as I possibly could, so the best thing to do was to enjoy the moment – the people around me, the experience and the process. That mindset really helped, especially during the more stressful moments. The support from the team makes you feel incredibly special.
Without giving anything away about what happens on the show, which course was the hardest to prepare and research for?
For me, it was definitely the fish course. It’s not something I’d worked with extensively before, so I didn’t feel completely comfortable with it at first. That lack of familiarity made me quite nervous going into the competition.
Luckily, the chefs I work with were incredibly supportive during the preparation. They basically brought kilos of fish into the kitchen and told me to practise again and again – filleting, handling and cooking it until it started to feel more natural. It was very much a case of repetition and building confidence through practice.
Even with that preparation, it was still the course where I felt the most pressure because it was outside my comfort zone. Compared to the others, that was definitely the dish I found the most challenging.
GBM is very much known for its props, did you embrace the props on the show?
I tried to embrace the props as much as I could, but being there for the first time I probably didn’t go as far with them as I might if I had the chance to do it again. I was so focused on developing and perfecting the food during my preparation that the props initially took a bit of a back seat.
It was only later, during the mentoring calls with the chefs, that I realised how important they are to the storytelling element of Great British Menu. They reminded us that it’s not just about the dish itself – it’s about the whole narrative and how you present it. So I had to refocus and bring those elements back into the dishes. In the end it was actually great fun. I remember sitting with my husband late into the evening building boxes and props together – it became part of the excitement of the experience.
Which chef that you have worked with has given you the most inspiration?
I don’t really have one big, famous name to mention. I didn’t come up through Michelin-starred kitchens, so I didn’t have that kind of traditional mentorship. Instead, I’ve learned something from every chef I’ve worked with along the way. Each one has their own approach, their own philosophy about food and how a kitchen should run.
I remember working in the United States with a chef from the Southern states whose whole ethos was about bringing people together through food. It was a completely different perspective and I learned so much from that experience. Those kinds of influences from different places and cultures have shaped my cooking in a really rich way.
If you were marooned on a desert island, what was the one type of dish you could happily live on?
You might expect a pastry chef to say dessert, but actually I’d go for something savoury. Give me a big, juicy Chateaubriand with a sprinkle of Maldon salt on top and I’d be perfectly happy for the rest of my life.
Finally, what do you know now that you wish you could have told your younger self when you were starting out?
Don’t limit yourself. So often we hold ourselves back because we’re afraid, unsure or lacking confidence. In many ways we can be our own worst enemies.
Over time I’ve realised how freeing it is when you stop worrying so much about what other people think or what you feel you’re supposed to do. When you let go of that and allow yourself to be authentic, that’s when you can really shine.
So my advice would simply be: don’t limit yourself, be true to who you are – and the rest will follow.
Marion will be appearing on Great British Menu from Wednesday 1st April 2026 representing Northern Ireland. Look out for more in our series of interviews with the great women chefs on Great British Menu 2026 – this page will be regularly updated.
