Monica Galetti, sous chef at Le Gavroche and MasterChef judge
New Zealand Marmite
I did try to get used to the English version of Marmite. And I almost did until a couple of years ago when my sister brought me some from New Zealand. I haven't been able to go back to the English stuff ever since. Ours is probably more salty and yours is maybe more bitter. Both of them are better than Vegemite, which is horrible, but I find New Zealand Marmite easier to eat, more moreish. I eat it on toast with lots of butter and almost the equal amount of Marmite. When I start, I find it very difficult to stop.
There was always Marmite in our house. Don't mess with the Kiwis and their Marmite; it's serious stuff. When the earthquake hit Christchurch in 2011, the factory that produces Marmite was closed for two years. The supermarket shelves were empty and people were selling jars for hundreds of dollars on eBay. It was absolute meltdown; we called it "Marmageddon". Even the prime minister John Key got involved. It's back to normal now, but I've just come back from New Zealand and I brought an extra jar, just in case.
Some people put Marmite on all sorts of dishes – I don't mind dropping a teaspoon into a pot of stew – but it's something I like to eat at home, on the sofa. I have to stick the jar right at the back of the cupboard or I'll eat six slices of toast in one go.
Claude Bosi, chef patron, Hibiscus, London
Pot Noodle & Frazzles
It's quite a dirty pleasure: curry-flavoured noodles topped with Frazzles, a bacon-flavoured corn-based snack you only get here in the UK. I never had it in France, but when I moved here in my mid-20s, the girl I was seeing at the time told me: "You need to try this – this is a proper student meal." I thought to myself, "Well, you know, I'm in a new country, I should try new things." I'm very glad I did: it's heaven on earth.
It's a perfect snack. Back in 2000, when I started [the first] Hibiscus in Ludlow, we didn't have any time to cook for ourselves. So as a time-saving exercise I'd just boil up some water, add it to the noodles and sprinkle Frazzles over the top. For the first few weeks, this was my main meal.
You may laugh at me and say it's disgusting, but most people who try it admit it's quite nice. If you haven't tried it, well, maybe you need to move on in life. It's not all about fancy food, you know? You need something to bring you back down to earth, and noodles with Frazzles is a good reality check.
That said, I don't eat them much any more. Now I'm a bit older, I'll go for a plate of cheese. I've got out of my late-teenager phase and I suppose I've gone a bit more French. It's probably better for me, the cheese, but– and I'll probably get in big trouble back home for saying this – it doesn't taste nearly as good.
Hélène Darroze, head chef, restaurant Hélène Darroze at the Connaught, London W1
Krispy Kreme doughnuts
My friend [the great French patissier] Pierre Hermé got me hooked on Krispy Kreme doughnuts. We were walking through Harrods about five years ago and there was a Krispy Kreme stand in the corner of the food hall. We picked up a box to share and I have been completely addicted ever since.
They remind me a little bit of my childhood. My grandmother used to make them at home, but without cream inside. In France we call them pets de nonne, or nun's farts, which I've always found really funny. Also when I was a child, we used to spend our family holidays in Biarritz, and on the beach there were guys who would go from one end to the other selling doughnuts filled with apricot compote. I would have one every day. In fact, I lost my first tooth inside one of those doughnuts.
So my love of Krispy Kreme is probably related to these memories – although I do think they're really well done, even though they are a bit industrial. I wouldn't eat them every weekend, but I'd have them quite often. Usually it's when I'm with my girls. I'll buy a box to share with them, although really I'm buying them for me. One of my girls prefers Marks & Spencer's doughnuts – I don't know why – and I have to negotiate a lot with her to get Krispy Kreme instead.
Simon Hopkinson, cook and author
Farrow's marrowfat peas
It's the mealiness of a marrowfat pea that I like, and the slight sweetness of them. You can use them to make mushy peas, but I never eat them in that state: I only like them heated up whole. They are very big and tender and absurdly green – there's obviously some colouring added, which doesn't bother me in the slightest – and I could eat them with all sorts of things. Once, I served them up at a friends' dinner party with a very rich chicken pie, with a big knob of butter mixed in and lots of white pepper on top. The reaction was fairly good all round, apart from one person who maybe thought they were a little bit common.
There's definitely a snobbery against marrowfat peas – that lurid colour does shock a lot of people – but I don't feel guilty about liking them. If something's a pleasure, it shouldn't be guilty, unless you have too much of it. I will shop anywhere and I'll cook anything, as long as I like it. Marrowfat peas I'll have quite regularly – I'm never without a can or two in my cupboard. If I'm feeling in that Sunday-evening comfort mode, I could even eat a bowl of them like soup. And if I was to do that … well, it's a very northern thing, but I'd have them with a splash of malt vinegar.
The brand I discovered I liked was Farrow's and I've never touched another brand since.
Tom Kitchin, chef patron, The Kitchin, Edinburgh
Chip butty
It's a simple but important formula: chips fresh out of the fryer which melt the butter spread onto a soft, sweet Scottish bap known as a morning roll, all topped with salt and brown sauce. It fills me with deep nostalgia – a remembered wickedness, like slipping crisps into your lunchtime sandwich.
I take my son Kasper, now five, after he's played football or – last time – following a day of mackerel fishing. Our fingertips were stinging and our ears hurt from the cold. Chip butties were our reward. When I take Kasper for lunch at the pub, he'll order six oysters or a mallard, and I'm proud of him for that, but I still want chip butties to have their place in his life.
We go to Franco's chip shop, next door to our pub in Edinburgh. Italians run many of Scotland's fast food shops, and owners Nino and Franco are no exception. They are third generation, but their fundamental Italianness is still there; they take great joy in eating but have adapted this to the Scottish market, serving fish and chips, smoked sausage and, yes, the odd pizza.
Nino and Franco have become good friends. They sometimes turn up at my back door with bags of fresh porcini in the mushroom season. Most of the time we just chat football as Kasper and I eat our chip butties. It's good for me, a release and a rare treat, although I do have to stop myself taking a can of Irn‑Bru to go with it.
Jeremy Lee, head chef, Quo Vadis, London
Wine gums
It started years ago with raiding the waiters' tips. After a busy Friday lunch, the chefs would say, "What are your cash tips like?" They'd be like, "What do you mean?" And I'd say, "Come on, share!" Then we'd go running down to the newsagent's to buy some sweeties and bonbons for the afternoon, just to give you that last little burst of energy. It was very funny and naughty.
Why do I love wine gums so much? Ooooh, they are just the best buck-you-up ever. As chefs, our palates and our appetites get annihilated, because we are taking little tastes of things all day long. Our stomachs go into somersaults and you need something that cuts through it. A cake is a bit much, a biscuit not quite enough. Fruit pastilles are coated in sugar. Chocolate is just instant bleurgh! It tends to be either too rich or just rubbish. But a wine gum delivers very, very well on the tongue.
For me, it has to Maynards. And in the kitchen we favour the bag over the rolled packet, which is too small and the wine gums can be quite tough. The bag is more yielding and fresher. The perfect combination is a yellow one, an orange one, a black one, a red one and a green one. I've been known to guzzle them Billy Bunter-style, just sheer greed, unashamed.
Maynards did a bag of reds and blacks and it was horrid. You've got to go through the yellows and greens and oranges to get to them.
Nathan Outlaw, chef patron, Restaurant Nathan Outlaw, Rock, Cornwall
Tinned hotdogs
When I was a kid we'd go to Maidstone United games. That's my local team and my father's a Chelsea fan, so we would go to their matches as well. It wasn't like it is now, with all the money; back then Chelsea was a normal football team and as you walked to the ground you could always smell the hotdogs and the burgers. If you were wearing a scarf on a cold night, that smell stuck to you. Fortunately I like it, so it's all right.
Even now when I cook hotdogs at home, that smell is exactly the same. It's one of my happiest memories. When I started training as a chef in London I couldn't afford to eat out or do anything really. My first job, back in 1995, I was earning £7,000 a year at the InterContinental on Hyde Park Corner and then I'd go home to the bedsit in Earl's Court and eat my tin of hotdogs. Ideally, I'd have them with onions, ketchup and mustard or just rolled up in a slice of white bread. Hotdog rolls were a treat – you were celebrating if you had proper hotdog rolls!
Even now if we went camping with the kids, I'd take a tin of hotdogs. My wife will eat them with me, but my kids hate them. They'd say, "Can't we have some real sausages, Dad?" Things move on. Jamie Oliver did a lot of these things where he showed people what's in those products, but I didn't watch that show! I didn't want to see; I don't want to ruin my nostalgia for something I used to love.
