BENGALURU: La Chaine des Rotisseurs, an international gastronomic society, conducted it’s fifth annual Young Chef’s competition on June 22. The competition featured 15 participants all under the age of 27 who are chefs at one of the restaurants or hotels that are La Chaine members. Some of these chefs were from Ritz Carlton, Shangrila Palace, The Lalit Ashok, ITC Gardenia to name a few.
La Chaine was started in India in 2008 and has been conducting the annual Young Chef’s
competition for the past four years. This year Tenzin Thophel bagged the first prize and he will be representing India at the international leg of the competition to be held at Taiwan. He was awarded a 30-hour cuisine, pastry and Thai cuisine demonstration at the Le Cordon Bleu Dusit Culinary School, Paris and to attend a culinary workshop at Le Cordon Bleu. In addition to this, he was given a complete
special knife set by La Chaine.
The competitors are given a task where they get seven mandatory ingredients and eight non-mandatory ingredients. They use more than fifty per cent of the ingredients to prepare an appetizer, main course and a
dessert for four people in equal proportion. Each chef was given a time limit of four hours to
decide the menu and prepare the dishes.
Six judges out of a panel of 12 supervised the participants. The winner Tenzin Thophel has been working for two years at The Ritz Carlton and prepared for a week for the competition. He worked for 12 hours at the hotel, after which he practised for the contest. “I wanted to make sure all my dishes were perfect. I mainly concentrated on the basics of cooking like seasoning and ingredients,” Tenzin says.
Another competitor says, “After seeing the ingredients, I became nervous. I specialise in Indian cuisine but all the ingredients were continental which I have never tried. It was a little difficult for me to prepare the dishes with the ingredients.”
Rishad Minocher, one of the judges, says, “The participants should be calm and collected. The winner was selected on the basis of his presentation skills, cleanliness and taste of the dish. For future competitions, I suggest participants should come with an open mind.”
Bhaskaran T, general manager, The Lalit Ashok, where the event was conducted, says,“Concours de Jeunes Chefs Rotisseurs is a provide a platform for young chefs to learn new cuisines and to train and develop themselves to be the best.”