Euro-toques Young Chef of the Year finalists met today at the Cooks Academy in Dublin to offer a free taste of the food that has already gotten them so far.
Mark Moriarty, John O’Connor, Keelan Higgs, Ciaran Elliot and Jack O’Keeffe will compete against one another in the final phase of the competition on November 25th.
Today, however, they were given a chance to see what some lucky members of the public, selected through Twitter, thought of their food - and what they thought of each other’s.
The young chefs, aged between 18 and 26, are the final five to be chosen from the countrywide competition, now in its 22nd year. The first stage was an online application, after which participants had to submit a recipe that reflected their own take on Irish cooking. Those who advanced were then interviewed before the finalists were selected.
For today’s tasting, each chef has been asked to highlight a producer from within 50 miles (80km) of where they are based.
“Today we get to see their talent and their skill, what part of the country each of them has come from,” said Gearoid Lynch, President of Euro-toques Ireland and Young Chef 2000. He said the sheer quantity of local produce some chefs had arrived with to feed the tasters showed the great pride they took in their communities.
Along with being made with ingredients from unique and local producers, each dish carried the personal style of the chef bringing it to the table.
One demonstration station featured Make your own Quail Lollipop, where tasters could choose from a variety of toppings that included Pop Rocks. Another offered up baked potatoes served in an unlikely way: a shot glass.
“They’re really intelligent, confident, well-spoken,” said Ruth Hegarty, secretary general of Euro-toques Ireland, of the final five chefs. “They’re all thinking well beyond what they’re doing in the kitchen to how they source their food and what impact that has in terms of the economy and the environment and so on.”