From the makers of the legendary BBC2 panel show QI and its hit spin-off podcast No Such Thing As A Fish comes Lunchbox Envy, to add a generous dollop of bizarre and unusual facts to every meal.
Launching on 24th February with two episodes, Lunchbox Envy sees QI Elves Manu Henriot (an ex chef) and Jack Chambers (a gastronome) gather around the table with chef & food writer Rosie MacKean to unpeel the culinary world, one ingredient at a time.
Fascinating and mouth-watering in equal measure, Lunchbox Envy will fill your brain as well your stomach. Packed with surprising food facts and bizarre culinary traditions, this new podcast answers the questions you never knew you had—like what happens when nuclear submarines run out of sausages, where in the world you can find blue bananas, and which country hosts an international testicle-cooking competition.
John Lloyd, Founder and Executive Producer of QI says: "Lunching with the Elves is a unique experience because they're as interested in talking about their food as eating it. Finding out that the tip of asparagus is called a 'squib', or that scientists have patented a new type of seaweed that tastes like bacon, is what makes Manu, Jack and Rosie the perfect bread-fellows (the literal translation of the word ‘companions’"
Lunchbox Envy will be hosted by Audioboom and will be on all major podcast platforms.
PRODUCER AND EDITOR: Alex Bell
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Sarah Lloyd
THE HOSTS
Jack Chambers
Jack grew up in South East London. He realised the joy food could bring when he tried a forkful of puttanesca from his mother’s plate for the first time in 1998, after five years of insisting on pasta with butter. From then on he was hooked on the possibilities that gastronomy had to offer, and he spent his 10th birthday at Paddington station because it was one of the only places in London offering a restaurant equipped with a sushi belt.
After studying Maths at the University of Sheffield, Jack toured the bars of Yorkshire playing the trumpet in a salsa band and worked shifts in the local café. He returned to London to research for QI in 2018 and feed his other appetite: curiosity. Jack has since worked on No Such Thing As A Fish, eight series of QI, and four books.
Manu Henriot
Manu has always loved eating. She grew up in an English-Gujarati-Mauritian family, as well as a community of South Asian Sufis, so was very, very well fed. Her favourite food is still roti, straight off the tawa pan, dunked in butter.
She began her culinary career in a ‘trendy’ London kitchen, then moved to The Netherlands to cook at an Asian/Dutch fusion restaurant. She soon realised she enjoyed studying food more than making it, so wrote a master's ethnography on women chefs, which involved working in different London kitchens for research.
Manu now works on QI and No Such Thing As A Fish, and spends her free time hunting for weird crisp flavours to impress friends, many of whom are still chefs (so it’s no easy task).
Rosie MacKean
Rosie is a food writer, chef and content creator. Cooking everywhere from high-end restaurants to film sets, Rosie appears regularly on TV and radio, publishes a weekly Substack newsletter The Dinner Party, and has 50k followers online. Her first recipe book, Good Time Cooking, was published in 2024.
Rosie lives in South London and is usually eating or cooking when she is not working. She has a degree in Modern Languages and speaks Spanish, Italian and French, all of which come in handy for haggling in the depths of Mediterranean food markets. Online she is @rosiemackeanpastaqueen
SERIES ONE EPISODES
- Garlic (24 Feb)
- Bananas (24 Feb)
- Milk (3 March)
- Chicken (10 March)
- Sausages (17 March)
- Pasta (24 March)
