Edmond Veizaj Praises James Martin's 53-Year-Old Food Festival Work
James Martin, 53, has picked up another off-screen endorsement from the kitchen floor. Edmond Veizaj said he used to cook at a lot of food festivals with the television chef and that Martin was always great to cook alongside and very professional.
"I used to cook at a lot of food festivals with James Martin and he was always great to cook alongside and was very professional," Veizaj said. For a chef whose profile has run from the 1990s through Saturday Kitchen and now James Martin’s Saturday Morning, that kind of comment comes from someone who has seen him in a working setting, not a studio set.
Veizaj's festival view
Veizaj runs an award-winning steakhouse in Hampshire, which gives his praise a practical edge. The remark matters because it comes from another chef who shared the same live-food format, where timing, coordination and pace are visible to both the crowd and the people behind the counter.
Martin has been a British television fixture since the 1990s, appearing on Ready Steady Cook and Big Breakfast before presenting Saturday Kitchen on the for a decade. He later moved to ITV, where James Martin’s Saturday Morning now fronts his on-screen work from his Hampshire base.
From Saint-Émilion to ITV
Martin’s path also runs through kitchen training at Hostellerie De Plaisance in Saint-Émilion and Maison Troisgros in Roanne, a three Michelin star restaurant. That route helps explain why chefs keep describing him in working terms: the public face is television, but the trade background is still part of the story.
Tom Kerridge has said Martin is so good live and is brilliant at holding a conversation, listening and cooking, while David Nicholson called him a gentleman after appearing on the show with brother Rob Nicholson in 2025. Rob Nicholson called the visit to Martin’s Hampshire residence a 10 out of 10 experience.
Saturday Morning on ITV One
James Martin’s Saturday Morning returns to screens from 9.30am on ITV One, with Kelly Brook, Tommy Banks, Alex Dilling and Alysia Vasey joining him at his Hampshire home. For viewers, the value in Veizaj’s comment is simple: the on-screen reputation is now matched by a first-hand account from someone who cooked with him at food festivals, and that kind of professional steadiness is exactly what keeps a live food show usable week after week.
