Celebrity chef moving to top Wem restaurant

James Sherwin, who appeared on the Channel 4 show The Taste alongside Nigella Lawson and was a contestant on MasterChef, will be taking over the reins at The Drayton Gate, in Wem.

He will be taking his inspiration from the trendy Nordic style of cooking and will be using only locally-sourced produce from allotments, market gardens, local producers and farmers.

The 38-year-old father of four, from Whitchurch, says that his promise of using food from Shropshire will be followed to the letter and he will only use produce that is locally sourced and in season.

James, who has also worked at Shrewsbury's Henry Tudor House, on Wyle Cop, and House of the Rising Sun, on Butcher Row, said: "I have been running a pop-up restaurant business and have been following the Wild Shropshire principle.

"I will be using produce which is made locally, reared locally and grown locally. I will mix this with things that I find on my foraging trips and will be bringing new tastes to people.

"I want to use British herbs, things that you find at the bottom of most people's gardens but which are overlooked, in my cooking and make people realise how lucky they are to have such great produce on their doorsteps.

"I will be serving up things that people haven't tasted before. It is going to be very Shropshire cuisine. Modern British food with all the menus centred around Shropshire. It will be local to the nth degree."

James, a former paediatric nurse, swapped his scrubs for whites more than four years ago.

Since then he has been making his name on the Shropshire food scene.

Not only has he run his highly-successful pop-up restaurants and worked in some of the county town's best restaurants, he also completed two weeks training at Le Manoir aux Quat Saisons, under acclaimed proprietor Raymond Blanc – a training ground for some of the UK's finest chefs – and is a regular at the county's many food fairs.