Lexington Catering announce finalists for its LexChef 2014 competition
Lexington Catering have announced the finalists for its 2014 Chef of the Year competition, which takes place on Thursday, at Knight Frank on Baker Street in London.
Rob Kirby, Chef Director at Lexington said the competition has gone from “strength to strength” throughout the eight years it’s been running. The company originally introduced the Lex Chef competition internally in order to pull the company together and showcase talent. Rob added: “The quality of cooking is outstanding and I can't wait to see what happens on the night!"
The six will be cooking in the competition final for a prestigious panel of judges including The Square's Phil Howard, Andrew Turner, Executive Chef for the Cafe Royal Hotel and Michelin starred restaurateur Jeff Galvin.
Rounding off the panel of judges is Amanda Afiya, Editor at The Caterer, Mark Flanagan, Head Chef to the Royal Household, Clare Clarke, International Pastry Chef and Elior's Food Development Director Peter Joyner.
Contestants were whittled done from almost 80 entries initially, where entrants submitted a menu for two consisting of one starter and one main course. Selected semi-finalists then cooked their menus, using a minimum of six items from a mystery ingredients list, in various evening cook-offs before the final six won their place in the final.
The finalists will have two hours to cook three courses from a shopping bag of ingredients which will be revealed to them later this week.
They’ll be judged on five different categories: working practices, skill level, innovation, flavour and use of ingredients and presentation.
By Stuart Armstrong
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