Aitken Spence Hotels:Big winners at Culinary Art Competition

Aitken Spence Hotels, once again emerged as the runaway winners of the 12th Culinary Art Competition organized by the Chefs Guild of Sri Lanka, maintaining its reputation for offering the best cuisine in the country. Chefs from hotels belonging to the Aitken Spence chain won an unprecedented 164 awards at the Culinary Art 2007. The medal tally included 45 Gold medals, 67 Silver medals and 52 Bronze medals.

The 12th biennial Culinary Art competition organised by the Chefs Guild of Sri Lanka was held from August 25-27 at the BMICH. Culinary Art was Sri Lanka's biggest food and hotel show featuring 1019 chefs from 110 hotels, both from Sri Lanka and overseas.

There were 22 categories for the medals and the Aitken Spence medal tally displayed the dominance the resort chain's chefs had over its competitors in this field. Aitken Spence won 16 medals from the category of 5 course set Dinner Menu , 10 medals for Petit Fours or Pralines, 7 for Wedding Cake Structures, 6 for Artistic Pastry Showpieces, 13 for Artistic Bakery Showpieces, 6 for Butter Sculptures and 4 for Sri Lankan meals.

In addition the resort chain won 8 medals for Hot Cooking Live, 1 for Dress the Cake Live, 15 for Plated Dessert, 5 for Cocktail, 5 for Fruit and Vegetable Carving, 3 for Ice Carving, 7 for Apprentices Hot Cooking Live, 1 for Dilmah Tea, 20 for Plated Appetizers, 07 for Creative Coffee Competition and3 for Dessert Live.

At the press conference announcing the awards were: Chef Shane Illeperuma (Earl's Regency), Chef R J Hashim (Heritance Kandalama), Chef Arosha Jayasinghe (Heritance Ahungalla), Master Chef Dimuthu Kumarasinghe (Group Skills Development Chef), Haleesha Weerasinghe (President, Chefs Guild of Sri Lanka), Chef Lalith Gunasekara (Waters Edge), Chef Chathura Wimalasooriays (Neptune Hotel), Amal Nanayakkara (DGM- Training).

Immediate Past President of Sri Lanka Hoteliers Association and Managing Director of Aitken Spence Hotels Malin Hapugoda and Gemunu Gunawardena, Director- Food & Beverages of Aitken Spence Hotels were also present.