Bocuse D'Or Singapore Selection

Despite being busy to the point of not being able to blog for the whole month, it has been a full month of good food experiences both eating out with N and key events happening in the local chefs industry.
The kick off started with Bocuse D’Or Singapore selection, a high profiled event in the global culinary world where representative competitors from 6 different continental zones meet in the finals at Lyons next year. The competition is held in honour to one of the world’s greatest chefs, Paul Bocuse. The Singapore winner will pitch his skills in the Asia region finals in Shanghai on May 30th with five others selected from countries within Asia. Only two competitors will be picked as representatives from Asia for the finals in Lyons 2009.
Our Singapore selection was held in the kitchens @ ITE Clementi on 15th of March. Some of the contestants include Executive Chefs Robin Ho (Marmalade Group), Edward Voon (The Cannery), Yong Bing Ngen (Majestic Restaurant), Executive Sous Chef Jeffery Siew (Merchant Court Hotel) and Sous Chef Jason Tan from Saint Julien Restaurant. The main sponsor of Bocuse D’Or is Norge who represents Norwegian seafood. Hence Norwegian Salmon was the main theme of the dishes and competitors had to cooked four main course portions from scratch within five hours. It is interesting to note that some dishes reflected the personality of the restaurants and chefs that work in them. Chef Edward Voon’s dish presented elements of molecular gastronomy with foams, gels and confit style cooking. Chef Robin showcased more on technical difficulty with alternate flavours and tastes while Chef Yong Bing Ngen stuck to his roots of interpreting Chinese classics with and modern European twist. In the end, both three won the selection and the winner was Chef Jason Tan from St Julien Restaurant.Though I wasn’t in the judging panel, I was still invited as guest to the event. Below are the other dishes that we sampled.