Chef winners of Academy of Culinary Arts Annual Awards of Excellence announced

Seven chefs and seven pastry chefs have gained the Academy of Culinary Arts’ Annual Awards of Excellence (AEE) recognition this year.

Among those achieving the accolade were three chefs from London’s Ritz hotel and a pastry chef from Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxford.

The highest scoring competitors in each category, along with their counterpart in the restaurant service category, will be announced at a gala award dinner at London’s Savoy hotel on 10 July.

Both the pastry and hot kitchen chefs had to perform a number of skills tests in an allotted time to gain their AAE.

For the kitchen chefs this included cooking a free interpretation pork dish, soused mackerel and a chocolate tart with orange scented cream.

Pastry chefs were required to create a spring wedding cake of sponge and buttercream decorated with royal icing and a further detail such as pulled sugar, petal paste or marzipan.

2006 AAE achievers

Kitchen: Tristin Farmer, Enverdale House; Andrew Golding and Graham Squire, Claridge’s hotel, London; Liam Hill, Tom Scade and Paul Smart, The Ritz hotel, London; Iain Walker, Loch Lomand Golf Club.

Pastry: Tarryn Coleman, House of Commons; Matthew Goldsmith, Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Great Milton, Oxford; Rebecca Kinsella, Chewton Glen, New Milton, Hampshire; Sylvain Millet, the Bagatelle Concept, London; Jane Milner, Bents Garden Centre in Galesbury, Cheshire; Caroline Prudence, Lanesborough hotel, London; Sonia Tagalides, the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London.

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By Joanna Wood

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