An Opportunity To Hone Your Skills

The Banarsidas Chandiwala Institute of Hotel Management and Catering Technology (BCIHMCT) in Kalkaji, New Delhi, recently hosted the culinary competitions: Nestle Young Star Chef and Young Star Hospitality Brain Twister. It was a three day event that had proved as a long cherished platform for the aspiring students and experts alike to have their cuisine creativity peer-reviewed and promoted among the visiting food enthusiasts and acclaimed chef super stars.

The principal of BCIHMCT, Nisheeth Srivastava exclaimed that the Olympics gave everyone of his students an opportunity to hone his/her skills. “Encouraged with the outcome, we have been hosting this event for the second time,” said Srivastava. Thirteen teams had participated in the ‘delicious’ competition of Nestle Young Star Chef and 14 teams in the Brain Twister, a competition that tests not just the art of food making, but also the science of it.

“One should have a lot of technical knowledge about food and the hospitality industry,” say Soumya Agarwal and Rohan Katarya of BCIHMCT who won the Brain Twister, 2002 title, “for instance, one may know how to use all the sherry varieties. But to win the competition he/she should also have technical knowledge of the varieties. Our sherry knowledge helped us in winning the competition. Sherries range broadly in colour, flavour and sweetness. But more broadly there are only two types, fino and oloroso, one of the three great fortified wines,” they said. On the Young Star Chef competition, among the 13 teams, the one comprising Gaurav Bajaj, Gurjeet Singh and Jitendra Butola, the students of Dr Ambedkar Institute of Hotel Management, Chandigarh, won the coveted title. The judges’ team comprised celebrity chefs of India including Shaju Zacharia, corporate executive chef, DLF Golf Resorts and Sushil C Chung, executive chef, The Metropolitan Hotel Nikko.