12th April 2013
Summer 2010 - More than Magical
Now in its 17th year, the Craft Guild of Chefs Awards ceremony has become a firm fixture in the culinary calendar, but the work behind the scenes is phenomenal, as Stockpot reveals.
As everyone waits in anticipation to learn who has won the coveted Craft Guild of Chefs awards, can anyone imagine the mountains of work that goes on behind the scenes to reach this amazing outcome?
More judges than ever volunteered to give up their time to judge the Craft Guild Awards this year, a task more difficult than most people may think, and one that can take hours of deliberation and, just like elections, a recount if necessary. Once all the nominations have been checked for validity and collated, all this information is copied several times over to present to the judges.
Weeks before judgement day, all 18 judges are given reams of information provided by the candidates and their sponsors, to help make the decision process a little lighter in the conference room at the Royal Garden Hotel where they will debate the categories they have been given to assess. There are judges with expert knowledge in each category that can be relied on to provide additional guidance and advice. But if anyone says judging is easy, they have been seriously deluded.
Some of the categories are harder to judge than others because of the diversity of the category. The Cost Sector Catering Chef Award category for example takes in so much schools, hospitals, prisons, business and industry.
This year there were some excellent nominees for this award and the amount of work carried out by the judges beforehand to shortlist three and select an overall winner was exceptionally high. One judge, for example, had written copious notes on each candidate.
However, no matter how much they jotted down, they still continued to flip through the information particularly if there was a lot to digest. In this particular category there can be, and decisions need to be made to avoid an impasse. Some candidates maybe known to the judges and sometimes their input helps secure the overall winner.
Craft Guild chairman Andrew Green says it is vital to get across the importance of the nomination form and how much an entry depends on it. “If candidates haven’t sold themselves well, the judges’ task is made more difficult,” he explains. In one case, he said he knew a candidate well but his entry hadn’t done him justice as it was far too brief. Another judge, Mike Stapleton, had even Googled a nominee for the same reason in a bid to get more information. “If you or your sponsor haven’t done the job well, it is easy to be taken out of the running even though the nominee may in fact be great in their work life,” says Green.
All the judges said nominations should not shy away from the criteria, which included innovation. Stapleton also says it wasn’t just about upping incomes but what else a candidate has done for the business such as educating the team. Some categories attracted fewer entries than normal, which was of concern to Craft Guild vice president Steve Munkley in that it may be a case of “we’ve done it before, we didn’t win, so we don’t want to do it again”. However on the plus side, there are some chefs that never give up until they win, he adds. He says the Craft Guild also writes to people it feels should be included to encourage them to enter. Other categories are more difficult because all the nominees are known too well. All of the Competition Chef Award candidates for example – and there were many – were renowned because of their exceptional competition skills that have been acclaimed worldwide.
It is interesting to see how long it can take for some categories to be decided owing to their complexity and the high calibre of candidate. Close calls even lead to questions about whether there really can be only one winner when it is difficult to pitch between two excellent nominees. This occurred more than once. To show how judging is no plain sailing, no decision could be made in one category as the judges could not agree, so it was decided to take the entries and find another panel to adjudicate and come to a decision. Only the Guild’s special team of experts takes on the monumental task of judging the Special Award and Pierre Koffman is without doubt this year’s most worthy winner.
So do you still think it’s easy to judge?
The winners
Apprentice Chef Award
Conor Stein The Royal Garden Hotel
Banqueting Chef Award
Steve Golding Sodexo Prestige
Competition Chef Award
Richard Bowden Compass Group
Contract Catering Chef Award
Derek Reilly Sodexo
Cost Sector Chef Award
Robert Kennedy Royal Military Academy
Development Chef Award
Phil Rimmer Apetito
Education Chef Award
Norman Robertson Ayr College
Ethnic Chef Award
Jitin Joshi Vatika Restaurant
Pastry Chef Award
Sarah Hartnett The Park Lane Hotel
New Restaurant of the Year Award
Galvin La Chapelle
Pub Restaurant Chef Award
Alistair Barlow The Fleece
Restaurant Chef Award
Sat Bains Restaurant Sat Bains
Young Chef Award
Adam Smith The Ritz
The judges
Andrew Green
Christopher Basten
Bill Farnsworth
Sophie Wright
Vivek Singh
Mike Stapleton
Geoff Booth
Martyn Nail
Peter Griffiths
Andrew Bennett
David Mulcahy
Mark Hill
Bill Vickers
Steve Love
Steve Munkley
Paul Gayler
Graham Hornigold
David McHattie
More judges than ever volunteered to give up their time to judge the Craft Guild Awards this year, a task more difficult than most people may think, and one that can take hours of deliberation and, just like elections, a recount if necessary. Once all the nominations have been checked for validity and collated, all this information is copied several times over to present to the judges.
Weeks before judgement day, all 18 judges are given reams of information provided by the candidates and their sponsors, to help make the decision process a little lighter in the conference room at the Royal Garden Hotel where they will debate the categories they have been given to assess. There are judges with expert knowledge in each category that can be relied on to provide additional guidance and advice. But if anyone says judging is easy, they have been seriously deluded.
Some of the categories are harder to judge than others because of the diversity of the category. The Cost Sector Catering Chef Award category for example takes in so much schools, hospitals, prisons, business and industry.
This year there were some excellent nominees for this award and the amount of work carried out by the judges beforehand to shortlist three and select an overall winner was exceptionally high. One judge, for example, had written copious notes on each candidate.
However, no matter how much they jotted down, they still continued to flip through the information particularly if there was a lot to digest. In this particular category there can be, and decisions need to be made to avoid an impasse. Some candidates maybe known to the judges and sometimes their input helps secure the overall winner.
Craft Guild chairman Andrew Green says it is vital to get across the importance of the nomination form and how much an entry depends on it. “If candidates haven’t sold themselves well, the judges’ task is made more difficult,” he explains. In one case, he said he knew a candidate well but his entry hadn’t done him justice as it was far too brief. Another judge, Mike Stapleton, had even Googled a nominee for the same reason in a bid to get more information. “If you or your sponsor haven’t done the job well, it is easy to be taken out of the running even though the nominee may in fact be great in their work life,” says Green.
All the judges said nominations should not shy away from the criteria, which included innovation. Stapleton also says it wasn’t just about upping incomes but what else a candidate has done for the business such as educating the team. Some categories attracted fewer entries than normal, which was of concern to Craft Guild vice president Steve Munkley in that it may be a case of “we’ve done it before, we didn’t win, so we don’t want to do it again”. However on the plus side, there are some chefs that never give up until they win, he adds. He says the Craft Guild also writes to people it feels should be included to encourage them to enter. Other categories are more difficult because all the nominees are known too well. All of the Competition Chef Award candidates for example – and there were many – were renowned because of their exceptional competition skills that have been acclaimed worldwide.
It is interesting to see how long it can take for some categories to be decided owing to their complexity and the high calibre of candidate. Close calls even lead to questions about whether there really can be only one winner when it is difficult to pitch between two excellent nominees. This occurred more than once. To show how judging is no plain sailing, no decision could be made in one category as the judges could not agree, so it was decided to take the entries and find another panel to adjudicate and come to a decision. Only the Guild’s special team of experts takes on the monumental task of judging the Special Award and Pierre Koffman is without doubt this year’s most worthy winner.
So do you still think it’s easy to judge?
The winners
Apprentice Chef Award
Conor Stein The Royal Garden Hotel
Banqueting Chef Award
Steve Golding Sodexo Prestige
Competition Chef Award
Richard Bowden Compass Group
Contract Catering Chef Award
Derek Reilly Sodexo
Cost Sector Chef Award
Robert Kennedy Royal Military Academy
Development Chef Award
Phil Rimmer Apetito
Education Chef Award
Norman Robertson Ayr College
Ethnic Chef Award
Jitin Joshi Vatika Restaurant
Pastry Chef Award
Sarah Hartnett The Park Lane Hotel
New Restaurant of the Year Award
Galvin La Chapelle
Pub Restaurant Chef Award
Alistair Barlow The Fleece
Restaurant Chef Award
Sat Bains Restaurant Sat Bains
Young Chef Award
Adam Smith The Ritz
The judges
Andrew Green
Christopher Basten
Bill Farnsworth
Sophie Wright
Vivek Singh
Mike Stapleton
Geoff Booth
Martyn Nail
Peter Griffiths
Andrew Bennett
David Mulcahy
Mark Hill
Bill Vickers
Steve Love
Steve Munkley
Paul Gayler
Graham Hornigold
David McHattie