Talking The World Cook with Emma Willis and Fred Sirieix

What do you love about working with each other?

Fred: Emma is a true professional. She's very easy to work with. I really get on with her and I really like her. She starts a sentence and I finish it and vice versa. When we work together, it’s very simple. We get on with it and we have a great time because we love food, we love travelling and we love meeting people. We have a lot in common.

Emma: Everything. His personality, his zest for life, his unpredictability - he’s just brilliant. In the beginning, I thought I’d get him to teach me French but recently he called, started speaking French to me but after “ca va” and “oui” I had to say, “That's it Fred, ca-va and oui, that’s still all I’ve got!” Fred is so easy to work with and The World Cook is very much a passion project for him, so you get to see him in his absolute element. He's obviously very passionate about hospitality and food and when you're on set with him, you can really tell because he has a million ideas an hour.

Can you tell us about any funny moments?

Fred: There are always funny moments with Emma because she's a really fun person! When we were in Crete, before Emma came in, I dressed up as a Spartan with a kebab stick as a sword and I put this big pizza dome on and a towel around my neck and started walking like King Leonidas in Sparta. I was walking in silly flip-flops and screaming, “This is Sparta!”. She looked at me and said, “Fred, it’s not Sparta, it’s Crete. Get out of your Speedos and get to work!”

Emma: The first time I met Fred in person was when we were filming for our very first episode together of season one. We were on an old airfield in the UK, and I was getting ready in my trailer with my team. Fred just walked in with a towel wrapped around him, and he was like “‘ca-va! I just want to come in and say hello, it’s so great to work with you guys! I’m so excited!” As he walked out, he turned around and the towel wasn’t pulled completely tight at the back so you could just see his pants and his bum as he left. I was like, “I know I’m going to get on really well with him because he just likes to have fun.”

What’s so special about The World Cook ?

Fred: What’s unique about The World Cook is we have chefs who are very good at their own cuisine – whether it's French, Italian, Spanish, Cuban – but what we are asking them to do is to recreate traditional cuisines. Can you be faithful to the original recipes like the grandmothers and the grandfathers used to cook it? Not only that, it's about adding unique flair and it's about adapting it and also if you can, to bring your own country into the traditional country of another. Now that's very difficult to do. The World Chef is up there with the Roux Scholarship, the Bocuse d'Or or awards like the Michelin Star Awards.

Emma: I love the fact it's mixing professional chefs with amateurs. Over the process of doing the shows, we might think it’s going to be the pros going further because they have more experience. But that’s not necessarily the case. There have been quite a few times when it doesn’t go the right way for the most experienced chefs because they have learned and been trained in such a way. But the amateurs tend to be a bit more wide open with what they might do. They’re a bit more fluid. That's what I love about it because you just never know who's going to win.

You visited some incredible places on The World Cook , any for the first time?

Emma: I'd never been to Iceland and that was on my bucket list. It's always been one of those places I really wanted to go, and I loved it so much that I can't wait to go back. It was just otherworldly. The people were so nice, and the food was incredible - I was really disappointed we were only there for a couple of days. I’d been to Croatia and Turkey before – and Thailand, but I was over the moon when I was told the final was in Thailand as it’s one of my favourite places in the world.

What was your favourite destination and why?

Fred: I liked them all. But for me Thailand was amazing as I’ve never been before. I love the Thai people and Thai cuisine. I managed to go and do some Muay Thai and have a session with a local fighter there. I really love the climate, the smells as you walk in the street, and everybody's smiling to you all the time, that is amazing. I've been to Crete before so it's not something that was totally new for me. But the places that we went to were all about the people. I loved it. We went to an olive grove which has been owned by a local family for generations. The welcome, the hospitality, the lunch they put on for us with very simple produce like honey and feta and tomatoes, and their kindness and generosity were incredible. It's about sharing love with other people. It doesn't matter whether you know them all or not, you share something, you sit down at a table, you break bread, you have a chat, you have a laugh, and you get up and you get up as friends and that's lovely.

If you were a contestant on The World Cook , what would you cook?

Emma: I love curry. I can do a very easy, lazy curry where I will get an already mixed paste and throw pomegranate and spinach in, play about a bit and keep it simple, but with a bit of creativity. But I’m also more than happy to get all the individual spices, grind them up, cook it in the right way, with the onions first to make your paste – all of that I'm more than happy to do because I love what I get at the end of it. So I would do a curry.

Are you an organised packer, or a throw everything into a suitcase kind of packer?

Fred: I’m 50/50! Sometimes I'm throwing everything in the bag, and I hardly take anything at all and other times I have two suitcases and when I arrive I'm wondering why I've packed so many clothes and suitcases. It all depends on what I do and the location.

Emma: I'm an organised packer, definitely. I always overpack, which I'm alright with because I'd rather have too much than not enough. But I've done it so many times now that, if I've been somewhere before and I know what I need, I will just pack the essentials. I've been packing for myself since I left home at 17, plus I pack for three kids now, too, so I'm pretty good at it – I just like to take my time.

On a plane, aisle or window seat?

Fred: I like the window seat because I like to look outside. Also, this way, when somebody wants to go to the toilet, I don't have to get up!

Emma: I don't mind as long as I'm not in the middle. But I always get stuck in the middle! I like a window because then you can rest your head and fall asleep, but an aisle is good for when you need to nip to the loo.