These include a special gala dinner hosted by celebrity chef Simon Rimmer and John Williams, executive chef at The Ritz, at the city’s Anglican Cathedral, the Battle of the North West competition, and the British Chefs Festival dinners.

The gala dinner held on July 11 is to be the culinary climax of the four-day Business of Food & Drink Festival staged in the city this summer. Guests will be presented with a five-course menu prepared and cooked by young student chefs, overseen by chef mentors including Paul Askew, food & beverage director for Liverpool’s London Carriage Works Restaurant & Hope Street Hotel and chef patron of the new Art School Restaurant.

“The gala dinner promises to be an unmissable event and the perfect culmination to the Business of Food & Drink Week,” said Askew, who is helping to organise the event with Mark Brown, managing director of events company, NW2.

“It’s a real chance for the industry to come out in force and support young regional talent – we’re delighted to have such a respected chef as John on board, and to have a local lad like Simon as a host, a real coup.

“The scale of the event demonstrates just how the region is investing in the future by giving local students the chance to show off their remarkable skill levels. We want the gala dinner and the Battle of the North West to become annual events, as well as a legacy of IFB 2014 – with a limited number of tickets on sale, I urge people who want food to be cooked by the head chefs of tomorrow to reserve their places today.”

The Battle of the North West is the region’s first inter-collegiate cook-and-serve competition and will take place in St George’s Hall on July 7 when students from the City of Liverpool, St Helens, Wirral Metropolitan and L20 @ Hugh Baird colleges will compete. Each team will create a four-course meal, which will be scrutinised by leading chefs John Retallick and Stephen Doherty, the chief examiners.

John Williams will reveal the name of the winning team on the evening of the dinner. This event will also raise funds for the chefs’ Adopt a School charity.

The British Chefs Festival dinners comprise two dinners held on July 8 and 9 at St George’s Hall, which will be used as a final assessment of cooking skills – part of a new level 4 Higher Apprenticeship for chefs which concludes its pilot programme in August. For their final assessment, 14 senior chefs will have to organise and cook a banquet for 112 people each night adjudicated by the AAA national committee.

The dinners will be officially hosted and examined by the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts, Craft Guild of Chefs, British Culinary Federation, Masterchefs of Great Britain, Welsh Culinary Association and the Federation of Chefs Scotland together with the Association Culinaire Francais.

For more information about these events or to book tickets – for the gala dinner these are priced at £125+VAT each or £1,250+VAT for a table of 10 and for the festival dinners £75+VAT each or £600+VAT a table for members of the hospitality and business community, visit www.thebusinessoffoodanddrink.com