Kendal College win UK Young Seafood competition 2017
Kendal College has beaten eight other colleges to win the UK Young Seafood Chef Competition 2017.
This year's final was hosted by the Grimsby Institute's Gallery Restaurant, with trainee chefs from Kendal College, Westminster Kingsway College, Coleg Llandrillo and University of west London, competing in teams of two to become champions.
Judges' for this year's competition included chef Nathan Outlaw; Ben Bartlett, Nikki Hawkins, events manager at Seafish UK; Serge Nollent, product group development manager at Young's; and Franck Pontais, private chef and food consultant.
William Bolsover and Niall Frith were crowned the winning duo for Kendal College. Bolsover said: "I can't believe we've won, I'm so shocked. The competition has been amazing; it's been brilliant to meet Nathan Outlaw and the judges today. Competitions like this will really make a difference to our careers."
The Kendal team won: a competition trophy; a seafood competition medal each; a £500 voucher for each team member; a Thermomix TM5 food Processor; a £1,000 voucher for their college to spend on Russums catering equipment; and a four day culinary experience from Koppert Cress, global growers of Micro-Greens. The trip will include two days spent in two different starred restaurants, a full tour of Koppert Cress facilities and growing gardens, one day spent discovering what foodpairing is with their very own CressCoach and on the final day they will sample new trends and visit markets.
Westminster Kingsway College came in second place and won: £300 Russums Voucher for the College; £150 per team member; a luxury knife bag per team member; a cookbook; a seafood competition medal and certificate.
Coleg Llandrillo came in third place and the university of West London came fourth.
Sponsors this year included; Seafish, Young's, Thermomix, Russums, Oak Ridge Group and Koppert Cress.
Nikki Hawkins from Seafish added: "Once again this competition has seen some wonderful talent. The nine competing teams from all over the UK, all showed exceptional skills in creating their seafood dishes and showed innovative ideas in the new ‘invention test' for the intermediate fish course this year.
It is encouraging to see such enthusiasm in the competing students. These are our young chefs of tomorrow and to reach these standards is a credit to both them and their lecturers who have encouraged them to show off these skills within a competition environment."
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