Chefs honoured with awards

Celebrating International Chef Day, the Indian Culinary Forum (ICF) organised Annual Chef Awards 2015 here recently to honour chefs and their contribution to the hospitality industry.
The awards are hosted annually by Indian Culinary Forum, in association with the apex body - Indian Federation of Culinary Associations and World Association of Chef Societies.
"Chef Award is not merely a competition, but a platform for chefs to put their culinary skills on display that will surely enhance their culinary quest, knowledge and forte," Chef Vivek Saggar, ICF General Secretary said.
He said that the idea of Chef Awards was to select Master Chefs from a national team and bring them forward to the international forefront.

At the 12th edition of the awards, S S H Rehman was bestowed with the 'Food Legend' award for his contribution to Indian cuisine while Chef Vincent Joseph was conferred with the 'Lifetime Achievement award'.
Winners in other category include Chef Rakesh Sethi of Radisson Blu, Dwarka who won the 'Golden Hat Award' and Chef Arvind Rai of The Ashok who won the 'Silver Hat Award'.

The winners were felicitated by Mahesh Sharma, Culture Minister, in presence of Vinod Zutshi, Secretary, Tourism Ministry.
The Chef Awards was instituted in 2004 by Anil Bhandari, Chairman of the Organising Committee Chef Awards and R Kumar of Continental Equipment along with ICF and IFCA to promote creativity among the chef community and to encourage people to join the profession, especially women.

Besides the awards, the evening also saw some fund-raising by chefs through their extravagant cuisines.
The master chefs of different hotels and restaurants prepared a gala 'Chefs' Child Dinner', the proceeds of which will be contributed to charity organization, 'Chef and Child Foundation'.
Chef Davinder Kumar, President of Indian Culinary Forum said that ICF will continue to encourage the betterment of the culinary profession.
"Through improved education, related industry events and collaboratively setting new benchmarks in the hospitality industry we will constantly thrive to bring our fraternity closer," Kumar said.
Indian Culinary Forum is the Indian association of professional chefs of Northern India which was formed in 1987 as a non-profit body to promote the culinary art of India.

The World Association of Cooks Societies (WACS) is a global network of chefs associations that has 110-nations fellowship comprising of various professional chef organizations from around the world representing over 9 million professional chefs worldwide.