Charity, Personalities | Posted on July 24th, 2025 | return to news
Celebrity chef serves up praise for Dorset cooking charity
Celebrity chef Nicholas Balfe congratulated The Friendly Food Club for helping more than 10,000 children and adults learn healthy cooking skills.
A celebrity chef and restaurateur has congratulated a local Dorset charity which has helped more than 10,000 children and adults to learn healthy cooking skills in the last 12 months.
Nicholas Balfe co-owns HOLM restaurant near Crewkerne and was a finalist in the BBC’s ‘Great British Menu’ and has appeared on Channel 4’s ‘Sunday Brunch’. He recently attended The Friendly Food Club’s end-of-year celebration at Moreton Village Hall, near Dorchester. The Friendly Food Club is a charity that promotes community wellbeing through healthy, affordable cooking.
During the celebration event, Balfe gave a practical demonstration in making healthy and inexpensive sauerkraut and took questions from guests, before enjoying a delicious lunch prepared by the charity’s team of cooking tutors.
Balfe told guests: “My dad Chris, who is the proud chair of this charity, is a baker, and my mum is also an excellent cook. So, food has always been part of my vocabulary.
“It’s great to see The Friendly Food Charity doing such fantastic work in connecting people and Dorset communities through healthy food, and I am very pleased to be here today to celebrate that.”
In 2024, The Friendly Food Club received funding from the National Lottery Reaching Communities Fund, enabling it to offer even more free healthy cooking sessions for groups including new mums with weaning babies, children who receive free school meals, families, older people and people with disabilities and additional needs.
Over the past year, the charity’s FFC tutors and volunteers delivered 456 events, reaching 10,887 people and resulting in 27,000 healthy meals being eaten or taken home to share with family members.
The Friendly Food Club’s CEO Liz Guilmant-Cush thanked the charity’s many supporters and funders including BCP Council, Dorset Council and NHS Dorset. She said: “The last year has been a period of exciting expansion in which we have launched our new Early Years Programmes, which we will now be rolling out across Dorset and putting online.
“Our support for people with disabilities, who have often been excluded from food education, will extend to specific projects for those with hearing and visual impairments, and we are delivering regular community sessions in Weymouth and Blandford.
“In the coming year we will be reaching out to even more vulnerable families and providing long term support. But to do this we will need the help of more businesses, farmers, food producers and prospective partners. So, if you are part of a company or organisation which wants to join us in changing lives and creating healthier futures, please get in touch.”
The Friendly Food Club was set up in 2005 by the late Tony Gibbons, a teacher and advocate of healthy eating from Bridport. For more information on the charity and to get involved, visit https://www.thefriendlyfoodclub.org or contact liz@friendlyfoodclub.org.
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