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In support of the Public Sector Catering Alliance drive to make the industry an attractive career option, the initiative will further celebrate the talent within the industry and is part of efforts to showcase its skills to a wider audience.

When the 650 awards night guests at this year’s event sit down to their tables, they can look forward to a menu inspired by some of the very best chefs in the industry. Other chefs involved in the initiative are NACC Care Chef of the Year winner Brian Preston as well as Dylan Lucas and Darby Hayhurst, the 2023 NHS Chef competition winners.

The quartet travelled to the Hilton Metropole in London on 12th February where they spent several hours with executive chef Paul Bates and some of his brigade. Their respective winning dishes have now been woven into a three-course menu.

Bates said: “I wanted this menu to be as much as possible about these winners and their ideas. Obviously, when you scale things up from a few servings to more than six hundred not everything works, so we have had to combine one or two things and tweak others. But what you will get on the night are the flavours, innovation and creativity of these leading public sector chefs.”

They discussed how best to take menus they had developed with very limited budgets and to particular nutritional standards and turn them into banqueting dishes suitable for an awards event. Following this they then spent time in the kitchen turning these ideas into a starter, main course and dessert that had to win approval from a menu tasting panel.