The Murray River Culinary Challenge is a three tiered competition. At the school level, students compete individually to vie for a spot in the Regional Final. The two top scoring students from each school are paired and compete as a team in the Regional Final, the top scoring team then progressing to the Grand Final. Menus in each level of the competition become progressively more difficult and are designed for students to be able to demonstrate their skills learnt during their hospitality training.
The Challenge spans four regions and will involve 99 students attending 17 schools from Campaspe, Shepparton, Swan Hill and Wangaratta districts.
Students had been practicing the three skills based menu dishes in class with their trainers, Craig Danswan at Echuca College, Rick Smollenaars at TAFE and the Kyabram students at GO TAFE. The School level events were held over two weeks in June.
The four teams in this year’s Regional hail from Echuca College, Kyabram P-12 College, Rochester Secondary College and St Joseph’s College.
The Regional menu of Tempura Prawns, Pork Tenderloin Roulade and Sticky Date Pudding is designed for students to show their newly acquired knife skills and basic methods of cookery.
Each team had 2.5 hours to present two serves of each of the 3 dishes.
The industry judges, Paul & Nikki Cohen were looking for consistency, flavour and were certainly impressed with the creative presentation from the students. A big thank you to our Industry judges who gave their time and expertise, to not just judge, but support and mentor the students through the competition.
The students that will go through to the Grand Final are Cloe O’Brien and Nathan Huismann from St Joseph’s College Echuca.
Congratulations and good luck for the Grand Final to be held at Galen Catholic College, Wangaratta on Monday 9 September 2019.
The coveted Murray River Culinary Challenge trophy, a piece of highly polished red gum sourced from the Koondrook forest, is residing with the reigning champions, Wangaratta High School, and will be hotly contested.
Moama Bowling Club has been a long term sponsor of the Murray River Culinary Challenge in the Campaspe region and this year is again the major sponsor of the overall competition. Thank you to the Moama Bowling Club for their generosity and support.
August 2019
Follow