This year's Hace event saw more participation than ever before with 170 chefs taking part in 12 live cooking competitions! They were competing for recognition from colleagues, medals and over 70,000 LE in prize money.
The highly anticipated anual hotel trade fair HACE, organized by the Egyptian Group for Marketing, was held under the auspices of the Minister of Tourism, Mounir Fakhri Abdel Nour and the Minister of Trade and Industry, Mahmoud Issa. Even though the country is still suffering from lower tourist numbers due to the revolution, all the exhibition halls at HACE were filled with companies showing their high quality products and services for the hotel and catering industry.Â
An expert panel of judges, both local and international, were at hand to lend their knowledge and provide feedback to the participants at the ECA live cooking competitions. They came from near and far to participate at the yearly fair, and were hard at work for the four days giving their best evaluation of every plate that was presented. Also present were the Culinary Trainers of the Culinary Training Centers Egypt (CTCE) to assist with the chefs’ events and help with the smooth running of the competitions. They answered a great number of queries about the International Chef’s Apprenticeship Program and contributed to promoting the CTCE at Hace'11.
By far the biggest challenge, not for the faint-hearted, was the MLA True Chef’s Challenge, which amounted to three consecutive rounds of Mystery Basket events. In this long and difficult competition, the chefs had to use creatively every ingredient in their baskets to come up with fabulous appetizers and main dishes under the scrutinizing eyes of the jury. The marathon cook-off was a worthwhile exercise, especially for the winner Omar Ahmed Abdel Moneim, Junior Sous Chef of the InterContinental Cairo Citystars, who left the hot competition kitchen at the end of the day with 3,500 US dollars prize money in his pocket.
The El Nour Vegetarian Dish attracted 12 participants, attesting to the increasing popularity of vegetarian food. Overall the chefs did well, inventing new combination of ingredients in innovative ways. One point that all the chefs struggled with though, was determining a clear substitute for the focal point of the plate, once the protein component was substituted from non-animal sources. Too many participants had what seemed to be several unrelated items served on the same plate. More practice will hopefully teach the chefs how to create well balanced vegetarian dishes at future events.
This year’s lively Hana Food Pasta Dish saw contestants having to make their own fresh pasta, adding extra excitement to the competition, which was popular as ever. The Unilever Junior Chef of the Year was also well attended, with the overall level better this year than the Unilever Senior Chef of the Year. Juhayna’s Chef’s Grand Prix Team competition, however, showed less skilled chefs this year compared to last year, when the judges were very impressed with the team performances.
At the Makro Mystery Basket, one of the main challenges was that the baskets contained a whole fish to be filleted. Another challenge was that the baskets didn’t contain any onions or garlic. A real surprise for the chefs, who have a tendency to create flavor by the use of garlic and onions only. However, different cress varieties, provided by El Nour, allowed for enough space to create a depth of flavors. One of the setbacks was that most chefs didn’t taste the cress varieties before using them. Another setback was that they deglazed the pan by using vinegar rather than lemon and water. This turned most plates into one taste, “vinegar”, causing some sour faces in the judging panel, and the overall loss of medal awards for this contest.
The Wadi Food Female Chef of the Year was a great success with 20 female chefs showing their cooking skills in creating appetizers and main courses. This competition showed many new faces due to the high number of students of the CTCE who participated and were also among the proud winners of the competition. Further, the Rofi Chicken Dish competition showed a high skill level among the chefs in de-boning and cooking chicken dishes. While hot dishes came out of the Watania Asian cuisine competition, it was the Japanese dish of Mohamed Mahmoud El Banna, Senior Sushi Chef of the Sofitel El Gezirah, that scored the only gold medal of this year’s Hace events.
One unfortunate outcome was last minute cancellation of chefs participating in more than one contest, because they did not pace their efforts, which led to excessive tiredness. This, in spite of the fact that up to 30 chefs were on waiting lists for some competitions. Therefore ECA will implement a new rule starting in 2012 that requires chefs to participate in only one competition per Hace event. This will give all chefs an equal chance to participate and hopefully also uplift the overall level of the competitors, who can then prepare themselves by practicing for one competition only rather than two or three.
A big THANK YOU goes out to all who contributed to the success of this year's event, including the Egyptian Group for Marketing in hosting the Egyptian Chefs Association, and all participants, judges, sponsors and local hotels that generously gave of their time and resources.
