It is called the Internationale Kochkunst Ausstellung (IKA), and the IKA International Olympiade der Koche. It is an international culinary arts exposition and olympic-like competition. Held every four years, like the Olympic sporting event, it attracts the best chefs from around the world, in an intense competition of culinary arts.
Held in Erfurt Germany, with some 1,600 or so chef competitors, it’s also the biggest culinary exhibition in the world,
This year a Canadian team from Prince Edward Island has done exceptionally well beating out world competition to win two gold medals, and fourth overall.
Kevin Boyce is the programme coordinator for the Culinary Institute of Canada at Holland College in Charlottetown P.E.I. He is a certified chef and one of the coaches of the Canadian team. I reached him by mobile phone from the site in Germany.
ListenIn their category, the PEI team were competing against 57 other teams from around the world.
As Chef Boyce points out, their team consisted of recent graduates of the school, who are competing against professionals in many instances.
They also used almost all local, and some unique, maritime Canadian ingredients.
The categories involve national senior and national junior competitions, military, community cooking, regional, and individual competitions, with sub categories as well
The PEI team competing as regional junior chefs, won gold in the ‘culinary arts’ category, and gold again in the ‘pastry arts’ category.
But it’s not quite that simple.
Over a five day period the teams in this category have to prepare for eight servings:
- – three different appetizers ,
- -a five course meal,
- -petit-fours (four pastry varieties),
- -four different dessert plates,
- – a buffet platter with 3 different varieties of terrines plus garnishes, again for eight people
- -four types of finger foods
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Gold medalists: (back row) Joerg Soltermann, Sean Burton, Austin Clement, Christian Marchsteiner, Kevin Boyce, Tim Cuff, Ben Wood, Hans Anderegg(Front row) Isabelle Cheverie, Kaitlyn Nixon, Sophie Hall, Rebecca van Bommel, Kaitlynn Broughton © Holland College- Culinary Institute of Canada
Chef Boyce said that the half year of preparations and the intensity of the competition almost brought him to tears when the team won their first gold and again when they were awarded a second gold.
He says he is immensely proud of the team and their hard work. He says everyone learns a great deal from these competitions, and now Holland College’s Culinary Institute is gearing up to move into the national category and another challenge for the next culinary olympics in 2020.
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