The new series of a TV show where contestants try to run their own restaurant has been filmed in Bristol.

In the third series of The Restaurant, celebrity chef Raymond Blanc will eliminate one couple a week to find the winners, who win the chance to open a restaurant with him.

From their first meeting with Mr Blanc, who owns a restaurant in Quakers Friars, nine couples face a series of increasingly tough challenges designed to test the creativity and practical skills they need to display before they get the keys to their own restaurants.

The first episode will be on BBC Two on Thursday, October 29 at 8pm, but it is not until the third episode that the remaining couples get a restaurant each to run in the city.

This series has already been filmed – so several Bristol residents will already have eaten in the contestants' restaurants and may find themselves appearing on screen. Each week, Mr Blanc sets a task, and at the end of the challenge one couple is eliminated and their restaurant closed.

The winners of the first series went on to open a restaurant in Thame, Oxfordshire, and the winners of the second series opened a pub in Marlow, Buckinghamshire.

Bristol was chosen as a typical example of a UK high street, where restaurateurs face a battle with the recession.

Mr Blanc, who launched his Brasserie Blanc in Bristol last year when Cabot Circus opened, said: "The industry is under tremendous difficulty.

"Every day restaurants are closing down. I must tell you that the customer has become demanding, picky – he wants the best value for money and expects great things. So the pressure is on us all. We must aim higher. We must do better."

The nine couples at the start of the series will be former military men Barney and Badger, from Essex and Kent; friends Chris and Nathan, from Kent and London; friends Daisy and Nadine from Herefordshire and London; partners Janet and Sean, from Berkshire; business partners JJ and James, from London; mother and son team Sarah and Joe, from Devon; former Cheltenham Ladies' College pupils Frances and Lucy, from Gloucestershire; mother and daughter Natalie and Sandy, from Yorkshire; and married couple Rebecca and Stephen, from London.