On Tuesday 17th January 4 out of the 13 SBO Chef students (2010-2012 group) took the challenge of competing against each other.
Landy Bernabela, Akeem Williams, Samika Hippolite and Cennick Isaac made a signature dish with a rather uncommon mix of ingredients, namely dark chocolate, red snapper, oranges and sweet potato. The dish had to achieve a "Caribbean feeling".
Judges Ricardo Perez, general manager of Oyster Bay Beach Resort, and Cedric Pas, general manager of Divi Little Bay were impressed by their creations, of which one to their surprise was festively decorated with M&M candies. Although all students forgot to give a breakdown of the cost prize of their dish, which naturally is an important aspect of a chef’s job, the judges were pleased with the performance of their techniques, the taste of the 4 very different dishes and the presentation.
Samika Hippolite made a cold dish, that according to Perez and Pas would sell well in every restaurant on the island. She was flexibel enough to change the decoration of the dish when she wasn’t happy with her original set up and the outcome was simply beautiful. She won first prize, which was a gold medal and a nice Japanese knife donated by SMTA. Landy Bernabela received the second prize (medal and knife) and the two male students got a nice medal. Their good performance should also be ascribed to their devoted job coaches at Holland House, Rare and Oyster Bay Beach Resort. The competition was organized with the support of Liccom, SHTA, SMTA, Sundial School, SBO Hospitality, Holland House and SBO Service Center, who all concluded that competition results such as this show that we definitely do have talented young chefs on our island.
Judge Ricardo Perez motivated the students to move forward and continue to improve their skills also after the completion of the course in July.
