Academy Awards of Excellence

Four chefs and four pastry chefs have gained the Academy of Culinary Arts' Annual Awards of Excellence for 2002 in the finals for kitchen and pastry held at Thames Valley University in Ealing, west London, last week.

The four winning chefs in the kitchen discipline were Darren Harrison, Loch Lomond Golf Club; Martin Nisbet, the Savoy, London; Adam Peirson, Claridge's, London; and Gajraj Sharma, Restaurant Parade, Ealing, London, and Westminster Kingsway College, London. The four successful pastry chefs were Angela Mammerella, Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London; Barry Johnson, Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, Great Milton, Oxfordshire; Gwendal Hamon, Carlton Tower, London; and Abigail Sarton, Claridge's, London.

All eight chefs achieved a mark of 70% or above in a number of exacting tests set by the judging panels of their culinary disciplines and, as a result, now belong to an elite club of young chefs who have achieved the academy's required standard of technical excellence.

Finalists in the kitchen section (12 in total) were set the task of preparing a four-course meal in five hours, comprising tomato consommé with cheese straws, a free-interpretation lobster dish, duck à l'orange with braised endive, potato gnocchi and buttered spinach, and chocolate soufflé with vanilla sauce. The lobster dishes put forward by the contestants ranged from pasta (in the form of ravioli, cannelloni and tortellini) and risotto, to strudel.

As with their pastry colleagues, the kitchen chefs knew two weeks beforehand what they would be cooking in the final. "We want to test their standards, not put them in competition with each other," stressed acting chairman of the kitchen judges Michael Coaker, executive chef of the Inter-Continental at Hyde Park hotel, London.

Now in their 20th year, the awards are seen as one of the academy's most important education initiatives and are intended to recognise the talents of Britain's best young chefs, pastry chefs and waiting staff aged between 20 and 26 on 31 December of each year.

This year's service final will be staged at Le Gavroche restaurant in London on Saturday (13 April), and students achieving the Annual Awards of Excellence standard will join their kitchen and pastry colleagues at a presentation lunch at the capital's Savoy hotel on 15 May. The highest-scoring finalists from all three disciplines will also be revealed at this time.

Judges

Kitchen: Michael Coaker (acting chairman), Keith Stanley, Ian Mansfield, Derek Quelch, Eyck Zimmer, Martin Lam, David Sharland, Brian Turner, Raymond Blanc, David Dorricott, Jerome Ponchelle.

Pastry: Yolande Stanley (chairwoman), John Huber, Robert Mey, Lisa Crowe, Keith Marley.