SALON CULINAIRE
One of the highlights of the event, the Emirates Culinary Guild Salon Culinaire, will offer professional chefs and bakers a chance to show off their skills. The event is divided into a series of practical and display-based competitions, which will be judged by a team of more than 30 experts appointed by the World Association of Chefs Societies.
“We are expecting this year anywhere from 1300-1400 competitors,” says Emirates Culinary Guild president Uwe Micheel.
“We have 24 different categories and we have five main trophies — first there is Young Chef of the Year (below 25 years of age) then we have the Pastry Chef, Best Artist, Best Arabic National, and Best Gastronomic Chef,” he explains.
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The competition will begin in the Za’abeel Hall, with the first set of displays, followed by a pastry display, and then 16 live display kitchens. The event will also feature a stage for ice carving and other display categories.
The team has also been careful to ensure the competition does not overlap with other culinary competitions hosted in the UAE through various measures such as eliminating team categories in favour of more individual prizes.
“The categories are very similar to last year,” says Micheel. “We have different competitions throughout the year, so that’s why we have no teams. We had teams at the Dubai World Championships in November [2013] where we had the team competitions, so we did not want to duplicate.”
However, while Salon Culinaire is essentially a competition, Micheel stresses the real message for chefs, especially junior chefs, is practicing the craft and honing their skills.
“It’s not the competition... it’s great to win a medal but it’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is that you learn something out of it, you train before, then you go there and you get the feedback from the international judges so you learn what you did well and what you did less well,” he explains.
Micheel is also confident the event will continue to grow from strength to strength, recollecting how the event first began with 70 competitors, and will welcome more than 1300 competing chefs this year.
“I hope and I expect, and actually I am pretty sure that everything will go smoothly because we have a fantastic team working on it. I expect the same level or little bit better standard than last year, and I hope that we have more junior chefs,” claims Micheel.
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