We launched the Hungry Chef competition to cater for #bmFamily💜💚 team members who become chefs later in life, as their second career, as well as team members who enjoy the position they hold within the kitchen and do not want go further up the ladder. The big competitions can be quite daunting and we don’t want these amazing chefs to miss out and fall under the radar so wanted something that was was specifically aimed at them.
It can be very intimidating and overwhelming for chefs to put themselves forward for some of the more high-pressured competitions, so we wanted to provide our more junior chefs with a competitive environment that allows them to push themselves, but isn’t as intense as Chef of the Year.
Hungry Chef Competition
We wanted to start something that everyone would be comfortable entering and give them the chance to showcase their skills. So, instead of being multi-stage, which can require chefs to take extensive time out of work, the entire competition took place all on one night.
All the chefs had to do was simply submit their name and place of work to enter, and all were able to compete on the day.
While the BM Chef of the Year menus are judged before they are tasted, the format of Hungry Chef instead allows everyone that enters the chance to gain competition experience.
The standard blew us away
This years competition was so successful and much better than we could have hoped for. The standard of the food was simply brilliant and was comparable to chefs with much more experience and was a real eye opener to just how talented these chefs are. We genuinely didn’t have a bad dish and we ended up with one of the judges asking for the pancakes with sour cherry recipe!
Building Confidence
This has lead to quite a few of the entries wanting to enter other competitions and the BM Chef of the Year, so we can already see the growth in chefs and the confidence building.
We wanted everyone that entered to get a prize and not just the winner so we had a private dinning room at one of the judges restaurant. We all went to the Michelin Started Kitchen W8 in Kensington and had an amazing tasting menu cooked by Mark Kempson and his team.
And the winner….
There has to be a very special mention to the winner, Crenuta Dragon. On the night she was unflappable and cooked amazing food. The main dish was pan fried sea bass with courgette flower filled with ricotta, fish bon bon, white sauce and courgette puree and was exceptional.
Her prize was a day with me going to the Japanese Knife shop in Soho to buy a new knife, onto Books For Cooks in Notting Hill for a few new books and then a tour around bakery and food pop ups.
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