Nine young chefs achieve the Craft Guild's Graduate Award
The Craft Guild of Chefs has revealed that four chefs have achieved its Kitchen award and five passed the Pastry exam in its 2022 Graduate awards.
The achievements take the overall number of chefs who have passed the awards to 102. The results were revealed at an awards evening held at Fortnum & Mason in front of examiners, sponsors, the media and industry friends.
Achieving the 2023 Kitchen award are:
Jake Mills, Studio Frantzen
Nathan Cooper, Goldman Sachs, BaxterStorey
Chloe Williamson, Prestwold Hall,
Georgia Hackett, the Arts School
Achieving the 2023 Pastry exam are:
Tara Pasotti, Pennyhill Park
Jack Kirby, Lygon Arms
Charlotte Vicars, One Aldwych
Paige Hill Pentonbridge Inn
Hoi Yan Tam, Sofitel London St James
Nathan Cooper was awarded the highest achiever in the Kitchen award and his mentor, Simon Webb, received the mentorship award in that category. In the Pastry category Charlotte Vicars received the highest achiever recognition and Jack Kirby's mentor, Jo Maurer, was announced as the winner of the mentorship award.
The Kitchen exam had seen the chef's complete a paper test focusing on their culinary knowledge before heading into the kitchen at the University of West London to undertake fishmongery and butchery challenges. They also had to prepare a spinach and ricotta ravioli, following a recipe, and serve up their own recipe using belly pork. The final challenge of the day was to make a classic dessert following a recipe by Andrew Ditchfield.
Ben Murphy, chef patron at Launceston Place said: "This awards ceremony brings an end to my first year as chair of examiners and I've loved the whole experience. It's important to me to share my knowledge, skills and ideas with the next generation and this provides me with lots of opportunities to do so. The four chefs who achieved the award will benefit so much from having this on their CV and I really hope those who didn't achieve the award come back next year. You learn so much from the whole process that will help you in your day-to-day work and future careers."
It was Will Torrent's final year as chair of examiners for the Pastry award and the senior development and innovation chef at Waitrose & Partners said: "This year five fantastic young chefs achieved the pass mark after the highest number of entries we've seen enter the pastry award. This year's brief focused on five-star hotel dining, and it was really interesting to see the different ways the chefs pushed themselves to create some elements of an afternoon tea. Looking back, I am extremely proud of what my pastry committee and I have achieved with the Graduate Awards and I look forward to handing the baton over to Sarah Frankland, who I know will take the pastry award to new heights in the coming years."
The Graduate Awards Achievers receive a range of prizes. NOWAH has donated a prize of four days in Italy for the pastry chefs including two days of one-on-one instruction from Pastry World Cup champion, Massimo Pica, at his Pica Pastry School in Milan
Grande Cuisine will take the kitchen achievers on an educational and gastronomy trip to France where they will visit the Paul Bocuse Market, specialist chocolatier Sandrine Chappaz and the Athanor factory.
