Polytechnic students bring back medal haul

Sixteen Bay of Plenty Polytechnic second year hospitality students headed to Auckland recently for the 21st annual New Zealand Culinary Fare.

Organised by the Restaurant Association of New Zealand the Fare provided an opportunity for those in the restaurant and hospitality industry to show off their culinary skills.

With a varied range of open sections, including Chocolate Challenges, Café Breakfast, High Tea, Barista, Lamb, and Salmon sections to name a few, many mouth-watering section options were available for current and aspiring chefs to put themselves up for scrutiny by a panel of discerning judges.

One of the most talked about events of the Culinary Fare was the Torque D’Or section – an invitation-only event where teams of three are asked to prepare four courses (six portions each) with prescribed ingredients over 2.5 hours and then server it silver service style.

The Polytechnic team of Kale Guy and Reuben Kell (chefs) won bronze for their efforts while server Laura Settle won a silver medal.

Polytechnic students across all disciplines are encouraged to enter competitions, the impetus for this summed up by Hospitality tutor, Aidan Galloway.

“I think it’s great for their confidence to be compared to other students with the same amount of experience and also to feel the time pressures – it definitely helps them later on when working in the industry,” says Aidan. “Our students were really pushing the boundaries this year with molecular gastronomy which was great to see!”

Coming off the back of excellent results at the recent Waikato Culinary Fare (which saw first year students taking out a significant number of gold, silver and bronze medals), the second year students had something to prove in the Auckland competition and they didn’t let the side down!

Other medals awarded included:

Silver medals: Robyn Hikau (Beef, open class); Billy Chan (Soup, training class); Sheree Savage (Salmon, training class); Jason Cameron (Salmon, training class); Liang Dong (Duck, open class) and Amy Edwards (Pork, open class). Bronze medals: Kane Tebby (Cervena, open class); Andrew Pascoe (Duck, open class) and Charles Du Cane (Pork, open class).