In support of the Public Sector Catering Alliance drive to make the industry an attractive career option, the initiative will further celebrate the talent within the industry and is part of efforts to showcase its skills to a wider audience.
So when the 650 awards night guests at this year’s event sit down to their tables, they can look forward to a menu inspired by some of the very best chefs in the industry.
For the first time, the LACA School Chef of the Year, the NACC Care Chef of the Year, and the two-man team which won the 2023 NHS Chef competition have been invited to contribute to the menu served at the Public Sector Catering Awards.
Under the careful leadership of Hilton executive chef Paul Bates and his team, their respective winning dishes have now been woven into a three-course menu.
Bates says: “I wanted this menu to be as much as possible about these winners and their ideas. Obviously, when you scale things up from a few servings to more than six hundred not everything works, so we have had to combine one or two things and tweak others.
“But what you will get on the night are the flavours, innovation and creativity of these leading public sector chefs.”
The four chefs concerned are Raheem Mogan, the current LACA School Chef of the Year, Brian Preston, the National Association of Care Catering (NACC) Care Chef of the Year, together with Dylan Lucas and Darby Hayhurst, the 2023 NHS Chef competition winners.
On February 12th the four travelled to the Hilton where they spent several hours with Paul and some of his brigade.
They discussed how best to take menus they had developed with very limited budgets and to particular nutritional standards and turn them into banqueting dishes suitable for an awards event.
Following this they then spent time in the kitchen turning these ideas into a starter, main course and dessert that had to win approval from a menu tasting panel.