Our students showcase their talent during the Christmas Dinner Challenge

Throughout their studies, our students take part in numerous projects and challenges designed to stimulate their creativity and develop their expertise. The year ended on a high note with the ‘Christmas dinner challenge’, a distance cooking competition requiring students to prepare the most magical of Christmas dinners.

Creating and arranging the perfect Christmas dinner

In this unusual and uncertain health context, which has led us to reinvent our teaching methods to adapt to the training requirements of our students, over the past few months our education team has come up with a series of distance learning challenges related to the culinary arts, pastry making and tableware.

As the festive season approached, professors asked our Bachelor in International Culinary Arts Management students to prepare a real Christmas meal at home, comprising a starter, a main course and a dessert, laid out on a table decorated in the colours of Christmas.  While originality and technique were fundamental, the presentation of the dishes was also an important criterion, as the meal had to be photographed in order to receive as many votes as possible in the first stage of the competition.  The 10 most popular entries were selected for the grand final and submitted to our jury composed of Meilleurs Ouvriers de France Cookery and Pastry-Confectionery training chefs from Institut Paul Bocuse, who were in charge of selecting the best culinary creation.

Some dream accomplishments

And since Santa never fails to be kind…

The jury met at the beginning of the academic year to judge the entries of those students who got through to the final. Our congratulations go to Charlotte, Chentong and Victor who made the podium and were rewarded with some fantastic prizes including vouchers for meals in our 1* Michelin Seasons gourmet training restaurant and in our l’Institut and Expérience training restaurants.

Congratulations also to all the students who took part in the project for their efforts and inventiveness, which made it possible to bring the year to a close in a festive and friendly spirit.

This creative and entertaining competition demonstrates the work we have done to ensure teaching continuity. Our staff have enabled students to excel and reveal their talents while putting into practice the techniques they have learned in class and in our laboratories.