A taste of victory

champagne flowed at last month's awards dinner at London's Lanesborough hotel when winners of the Great British Recipe Competition gathered to celebrate their success.

Twelve category winners were each awarded a cheque for £1,000. The top prize of £5,000 was eventually split between two contestants.

The awards were the culmination of "the world's largest recipe competition", which saw some 350 recipes pouring into Caterer's offices. All recipes appear in the 1997 Caterer & Hotelkeeper Directory.

Last summer, paper judging took place to whittle down these recipes into a shortlist of 36. From there, Peter Griffiths, head chef of the Manor Hotel at Meriden in the West Midlands, and Amanda Afiya of Caterer & Hotelkeeper tasted all the dishes, which were cooked by a panel of celebrity chefs at Croydon College in Surrey. Winners were then selected for each of the 12 categories. n