TUCO event "best ever"

This year’s TUCO Competition and Training Event has been hailed as the best yet by organisers and competitors alike. Taking place in Blackpool from 30th to 31st March, the event comprised three different competitions – the Chef’s Challenge (won by Imperial College, London, who will receive a place at the Novelli Academy courtesy of Carlsberg as part of their prize), the CUBO Foodservice Challenge (Stephen Lambert, University of Brighton) and the Knorr Chef of the Year (Allan Jones of Keele University) – as well as the National Training Event, which this year focused on marketing.

TUCO Chairman Russ Allen told us: “It’s gone really, really well. The feedback from all the delegates and the competitors has been absolutely tremendous, and the judges have said that the standard of the food was the best ever. We couldn’t have wished for a better event.”

Indeed, even the current economic gloom couldn’t dent proceedings, as the Training Event acknowledged by running workshops which were aimed at showing how improving your marketing can help you counter the downturn in a proactive fashion. “It’s a difficult time at the moment,” said Allen, “and we thought it was appropriate to provide delegates with the tools to get through it.”

Newly crowned Knorr Chef of the Year Jones also expressed satisfaction with the event – and his surprise at winning. He told us: “After last year, when we (the Imperial team) didn’t pick up anything (in the Chef’s Challenge), I went in with the idea of just doing the best I can. I didn’t even really look at the competition,
I just focused on what I had to do. At the ceremony, I only heard ‘and the winner is Allan J…’ and the rest was just pure excitement! I’m still absolutely over the moon about it.”

Congratulations to all those who took part and to the organisers from TUCO, though Unilever’s Jeremy Sear, who is on the committee as well as arranging Knorr’s sponsorship of the Chef’s Challenge, has told us that they’re already busy organising next year’s event. “We’ve already started looking at the menu for the Monday night,” he said, “and we’re considering perhaps tweaking the actual competition itself to make it better. All I can say at this stage is that the menu will be very contemporary and the competition will be for a wider audience. All in all, it promises to be even better than this year’s event.”