This year’s Scottish Chef’s Conference, which brings together chefs, college lecturers and students from all over Scotland and showcases demonstrations from Michelin starred chefs took place at the Hilton by Double Tree Hotel on Monday 6 November 2017.

At the evening reception, 300 guests including Chef Albert Roux and Master Chef winner Gary McLean, sat down to enjoy a five course gourmet dinner with champagne.

Fifteen of the Paisley campus hospitality students prepared, cooked and served a total of 1200 mouth-watering canapés within two hours! Yes, you read correctly 1200 canapés in two hours!

Christopher Watson, Curriculum Enhancement Lecturer for Hospitality at our Paisley campus said, ‘Part of the theatre', when cooking the canapés, was that the students had to cook the them live in front of the guests.’

The canapé selection included: Seared Shetland scallop/Celeriac, crab & coconut slaw and a Mini venison slider with tomato chutney and a toasted brioche bun.     

One of our students - Sagar Massey, who recently scooped the Paisley campus ‘Hospitality Student of the Year’ award entered a live audience salmon competition where he had to fillet, skin, portion and cook a side of salmon within a 15-minute deadline.

We are delighted to report that Sagar not only won the heats, but he was placed 2nd out of 10 different college entries.

Christopher added, ‘This was a very prestigious event as there were 300 chefs attending the dinner - so no pressure there. The students received fantastic feedback from the guests.’

Sagar commented, ‘I think we were all quite nervous as we’d never cooked for so many people before. It all went alright on the night though and it was a great experience.’

Jav Aziz, Executive Head Chef for Elior UK said, ‘The students worked very hard front of house and behind the scenes to produce tasty and well-presented canapés. The College must be very proud of its students and lecturers.’

After serving the canapés, five of the students were asked to stay behind to help out in the main kitchen with the 5 course gourmet dinner. They impressed the head chef so much with their enthusiasm and standard of work that he offered them all a job!!  In addition to this, one of our younger students was also offered a scholarship working with the Scottish Culinary Team, which will involve her travelling the world to compete in major cooking competitions. Next year alone the team will be travelling to London, Luxemburg and Kuala Lumpur.

All of the students who took part in the evening reception were invited on stage at the end of the event to receive a standing ovation from 300 happy customers.

Kathleen Monaghan from Inspire Catering commented,

The students did an amazing job and the canapés were fantastic! We are always on the lookout for talented chefs and there could be the possibility to open up some opportunities for the students.

Well done to our Hospitality students!

If you’d like to get into Hospitality, we have several access courses starting in January across our three campuses. Click here to browse and apply.