It doesn’t get more high pressure than this. One sealed black box containing a variety of unknown ingredients and one hour to develop a four course fine dining menu for the most important meal of your life.
This will be the scenario facing 76 of the world’s leading young chefs this Wednesday when they take part in Meat and Livestock Australia’s Black Box Culinary Challenge Global Grand Final in Dubai.
The Challenge will bring together teams of three young chefs – all under the age of 32 – and a team manager from 19 countries.
Each team qualified for the grand final after winning their regional Black Box heat. Along with other prizes, the grand final winning team will win a gourmet culinary tour to Australia.
Less than 24 hours after opening their mystery black box the teams will cook their four course menu which will be first served to a judging panel and then to 570 guests at a gala dinner.
The teams will be representing some of the world’s leading hotels and restaurants, including Salt by Luke Mangan (Japan), The Willard Intercontinental Hotel (USA), The Westin Beijing (China), The Grand Hyatt Amman (Jordan), Swissôtel The Stamford (Singapore) and Disney Hollywood Hotel (Hong Kong).
The ingredients in the black box will include Australian beef and lamb, Norwegian seafood, Australian macadamia nuts, French Valrhona chocolate and other high quality ingredients from around the world.
MLA’s Manager International Market Projects, Tim Kelf said the MLA Black Box Culinary Challenge was an entertaining demonstration of live cooking and an excellent way to showcase quality Australian beef and lamb to an international audience of foodservice professionals.
“Australian red meat is amongst the best quality in the world and the MLA Black Box Culinary Challenge is a fantastic opportunity to put our produce before some of the world’s leading chefs,” Mr Kelf said.
“Australia has fantastic, internationally competitive red meat products – not just in terms of price, but more importantly, flavour, tenderness and versatility – and we want the world to know about it. The Black Box Challenge is a great way of getting this message out there.”
Developed by MLA, the MLA Black Box Culinary Challenge has been running for 12 years, with next week’s event being the fourth grand final in the Challenge’s history. There have been over 70 Black Box events held since 1996 involving more than 3,000 young chefs from 19 countries.
Originally only a competition for South Asia’s young chefs, the MLA Black Box Culinary Challenge has experienced phenomenal growth and now includes teams from the Middle East, Africa, Asia and North America.
Three MLA Board Directors, including Chairman Don Heatley, will be attending the Black Box grand final in Dubai.
