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Garrett Brower (center, above) has been named the winner of the S.Pellegrino Young Chef Academy Competition 2024-24 USA Regional Final at an event in New York.
Brower wowed the Local Jury of chefs Valerie Chang, Curtis Duffy, Aisha Ibrahim, Ayesha Nurdjaja, and Junghyun Park with his signature dish of quail stuffed with Chesapeake oysters, a dish with a strong sense of sustainability.
“By celebrating the products and cuisine of the Chesapeake Bay I hope to generate interest in its preservation. Oysters, in particular, are an iconic Chesapeake Bay species that have been decimated, like many other native populations, by habitat loss, poor water quality, and harvest pressure. The modern Chesapeake pantry must reflect current sustainable harvests and farmed oysters exemplify this expectation,” said Brower of the dish.
He will now go on to compete at the competition Grand Finale in Milan in 2025, where he and 14 other young hopefuls will cook again for the chance to be crowned the best young chef in the world.
The winning dish
On the night, however, another young chef picked up the S.Pellegrino Social Responsibility Award, a collateral prize of the competition given to the chef whose dish best exemplifies sustainable practices. It was won by Adrien Calmels for his dish, Summer in Oregon, with the young chef also picking up the Acqua Panna Connection in Gastronomy Award, another collateral prize, on what was a hugely successful night for him. The Acqua Panna Connection in Gastronomy Award, voted for by the competition mentors, is given for a dish representing the culinary heritage of the region the chef represents, highlighting both traditional culinary practices and the chef’s modern vision, and providing a connection between the past and the future. Calmels describes the dish as a “snapshot of Oregon’s spirit.”
The final collateral prize, the Fine Dining Lovers Food for Thought Award, which is voted for by the Fine Dining Lovers community and the public at large, was won by Nicolas Lopez for his dish, Pork with Hints of the Sea, a dish he says speaks to his “years of experience” in the industry,” from a local pub up to fine dining.
After the awards, guests were treated to a special dinner celebrating 125 years of S.Pellegrino, cooked by former competitors Daniel Garwood and Michael Park, and one-time Local Juror and mentor, Nino Compton.
The Forum
Left to right: Andrew Friedman, Ayesha Nurdjaja, Valerie Chang, Curtis Duffy, Aisha Ibrahim, and Junghyun Park
Ahead of the award ceremony, participants, mentors, and other audience members had the privilege of hearing five of the most impactful chefs in the modern American restaurant scene share their thoughts on nurturing the next generation of chefs and reflect on their process of creative maturation en route to becoming chefs.
Entitled 'The Forum,' this panel discussion is becoming a traditional feature at SPYCA Competition events. As at the most recent New York City event in 2022, journalist and podcaster Andrew Friedman moderated, with the Local Jury forming the panel.
The conversation was framed by the trailer for and clips from the S.Pellegrino documentary Afuera Hay Más—A Young Chef’s Journey. The clips presented moments from the documentary that touched on identity, work environments, and teamwork and sparked heartfelt conversation, observations, and advice from the panelists.
On the topic of identity, Ayesha Nurdjaja described the confluence of basic skills and creative nimbleness that is required for a chef to reach full flight: “The technique has to come first,” she said. “After that I’m always learning about Middle Eastern cuisine, and [the food] is the alchemy of my own magic.”
Valerie Chang echoed this sentiment, describing how her cuisine reflects not just her Peruvian heritage but also how it was adapted to her US upbringing. In her early 30s, and a chef-owner for several years now, Chang revealed that she feels that she only really locked into her identity on the plate this past year.
Aisha Ibrahim described the unique challenges of taking over the kitchen of an institution like Canlis, which has been operating across a quarter-century and three generations of family ownership, without diluting the elements of Filipino (her native culture), Japanese, and other cuisines that define her style. She highlighted the belief that “all cultures belong on a plate, all cultures are relevant in fine dining,” and detailed how she has gradually woven her defining reference points into Canlis’ menu.
Regarding teamwork, various panel members described their efforts to foster a dynamic where everybody feels comfortable asking questions and not achieving absolute perfection. Ibrahim touched on her belief that young cooks need to know that it’s okay to make mistakes as they develop. She cited her background as an elite-level high school and college athlete and pointed out that when players play scared, they are most likely to make mistakes—the same applies to cooks in kitchens.
The working-environment portion of the conversation sparked some very honest reflection, especially by the chefs who operate in traditional fine-dining settings, Curtis Duffy and Ibrahim. The chefs made a distinction between the abusive kitchens of the past (condemned by all panelists) with the necessary intensity and pressure of all restaurant kitchens and especially those whose food calls for especially exacting cooking techniques and plating styles.
Junghyun Park made a point of singling out the S.Pellegrino Young Chef Academy as an opportunity for young chefs to connect and grow.
“I think the Young Chef Academy can be a good example [of coming together],” he said. “You guys are competing with each other, but you are also building a community.”
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