YORK has played a starring role TV chef Heston Blumenthal’s television latest series.

The final episode of Heston’s Fantastical Food, which was broadcast on Channel 4 on Wednesday, but can be seen again at 6.30pm on Christmas Eve, saw the culinary alchemist visit the Shambles.

Dressed as Father Christmas, he asked shoppers about their culinary memories of Christmas as well as paying a visit to the Earl Grey Tea Rooms and Shambles Butchers. David Hind, who works at the butchers, said: “He came in our shop, and we had no idea who it was, we didn’t recognise him because he didn’t take the beard off. We told him we didn’t have any turkeys in yet though.”

Helen Wright, a supervisor at the Earl Grey Tea Rooms, said: “He seemed really nice. He had a couple of cups of tea and let us all take photos with him. We were really busy but he said hello to the customers. He didn’t have time to eat anything though because he was getting changed into his Father Christmas costume!”

For an earlier episode in the series, the Michelin star chef visited the Nestlé factory in York to find out the processes involved in creating chocolate bars.

Heston consulted staff to work out how to ‘supersize’ Rolos, make the sourest Fruit Pastilles a human can taste and the world’s largest KitKat.

A factory spokesman said: “We were delighted to welcome Heston into the factory and it was an amazing experience to work alongside him and create enormous versions of our everyday confectionery items.”

The series has seen Heston try to recreate childhood food memories with a twist.