More medals on the menu for talented young Wyboston Lakes Chef

Claire Willett, a chef at Wyboston Lakes conference and leisure venue, has added even more accolades to the bronze medal that she won in last October’s international Culinary Olympics – including a gold at the recent Hospitality Show at Birmingham’s NEC.

 

Demi-chef Claire carried off a top award in the Salon Culinaire event at the Hospitality Show by displaying her culinary artistic talents. She won gold in the fat carving section of the Junior Display Salon, having chosen to carve an image of a lion’s head.

 

Claire was competing as part of the Craft Guild of Chefs Academy team, which is managed by Fergus Martin, Executive Chef at Wyboston Lakes. Her gold was part of a highly successful event for the team, which won a total of three golds, five silvers and eight bronzes. The Craft Guild is the leading chefs’ association in the UK, and its Culinary Academy is a structure through which chefs can build and develop their competitive CVs, with a system of awards recognising levels of skill and competitive excellence. Wyboston Lakes regularly offers kitchen facilities to team members for training days.  

 

Claire’s success at the NEC came hard on the heels of yet another triumph. Immediately after the Culinary Olympics in Germany, Claire - who came to Wyboston Lakes in 2011 - became one of only twelve chefs from across the country to reach the finals of the CCE/IACC Chefs’ Challenge, one of the top events in the specialist conference centre industry. The event is organised annually by Conference Centres of Excellence and the International Association of Conference Centres. Claire clinched the award for Best Dessert, and helped her Wyboston Lakes colleague, restaurant supervisor Steven Whitehead, to win the Food Service Skills category.

 

Most recently of all, on Saturday 2 February Claire came within a few points of winning the UK section of the IACC Copper Skillet event, in which she came third. The event places a premium on the ability of competing chefs to create appealing dishes with a very limited selection of ingredients, using basic cooking equipment. Wyboston Lakes actually hosted the final, the winner of which goes forward to an international cook-off in the USA.

 

“Claire’s record of success over the past few months is truly spectacular, especially as in many of the competitions she has faced up to much more experienced chefs,” commented Fergus Martin: “It’s also very pleasing to all of us at Wyboston Lakes that the overall Craft Guild of Chefs Academy team did so well at the Hospitality Show: we feel that by providing facilities to help build their skills, we are also helping to raise standards generally.”