Expanding the East Coast Salon Culinaire
If you ever wanted proof that competition leads to excellence, look no further than your local ‘salon culinaire.’
My wife and I were privileged to be invited to the ‘2nd East Coast Culinary Competition’ held at the UAE’s Miramar Al Aqah Beach Resort last month, an event supported by the Emirates Culinary Guild (ECG) and the World Association of Chefs Societies (WACS).
According to the organiser and chief enthusiast, chef KAC Prasad, East Coast VP of the ECG and executive chef at the host hotel — not to mention Hotelier Middle East’s Executive Chef of the Year 2012 — this year’s event saw 10 hotels and more than 170 participants from Fujairah town and its coastal resort areas such as Al Aqah take part, compared to six hotels and 130 participants last year.
All in all, there were 11 categories in the day-long competition, mainly for pre-prepared ‘static’ displays of various main course dishes and showpieces made of bread and chocolate, but also live events for fruit carving, fish and seafood cooking and cocktail mixing.
Young chefs in tall white hats milled excitedly around long tables of culinary creations, reflecting extraordinary levels of talent and artistic giftedness — food that would not have looked out of place in a sculpture exhibition or picture gallery. Some chefs stood proudly to have their photos taken next to entries marked with bronze, silver or gold medal stickers.
Others debated the merits of the pieces and the thinking of the judges, who were strutting importantly with their clip boards from one category to the other, bedecked in honorary ribbons and weighed down with campaign badges.
Still other guests, invited along for the ride, enjoyed free samples of the latest products from the suppliers and sponsors exhibition that added colour to an already wildly vivid event.
“We should not forget the people that are behind (the event), that is, the suppliers – you can see my jacket, it is full of more logos than an F1 driver!” comments chef Prasad.
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Young talent
More than a team event, the salon was a chance for young chefs — often in reality friends working in competing hotels — to prove themselves as individuals, to add a significant ‘gong’ to their CVs, and to reach for a personal benchmark of excellence for the sake of pure self-satisfaction.
Preparations at Le Meridien Al Aqah Beach Resort, for example, started long before the event, as GM Patrick Antaki explains: “We started practising for it well over a month ago. Some of the boys and girls, a month and a half ago. We even had a mock competition a few weeks ago for them to start improving and taking the criticism and to be able to cope with all the stress that the competition brings. It was good fun!”
The competition also represents the gathering of a ‘brotherhood’, as George Iacob, F&B manager at the Hilton Fujairah comments: “It is very nice for networking – and one of the reasons we get together is that all these hotels in Al Aqah and Fujairah, when we need help, they will pitch up.”
Chef Prasad and Miramar Resort GM, Ashraf Helmy started the event after early successes by their chefs’ team at salons in Dubai.
“Me and the chef, we’re talking about how we can make our boys more enthusiastic and to give it more effort,” explains Helmy. “On the East Coast, there is not much happening, so we decided to start our first competition.
Our dream was not that big. We were talking about something very small. It was like a social thing, like competing against each other in football. In our wildest dreams, we did not think that it was going to become this big. In two years, I think to reach this size is a great success.
“We are planning next year to make it much bigger, to include Ras Al Khaimah, Ajman – all the Northern Emirates. It started and I don’t think anybody can stop it now.”
About the Author: Guy Wilkinson is a director of Viability, a hospitality and property consulting firm in Dubai. For more information, email: guy@viability.ae