Alliance turns 7, a new contest is born!

45 students, representing the top 12 international schools and universities in the Arts of the table and Culinary Arts have participated in the first “Cuisine du Monde” contest held by the Worldwide Alliance. Created in 2004, the Worldwide Alliance enables some 50 students each year to follow an exclusive 4-month program at Institut Paul Bocuse in order to perfect their techniques, discover French culture and share and promote their own culinary cultures. The four months of intense training finished in style with this contest.

“Cuisine du Monde” has a two-fold objective:

The first is to observe the students’ execution in the kitchen (technical performance, organization in the kitchen, compliance to specifications) as well as the tasting quality of the dishes prepared, students’ capacity to dress, present and serve their dishes and then explain their work to the members of the jury.

The second objective is a strong attachment to underscore the value of the cultural and gastronomical diversity from the different countries represented.

The consuls from Mexico, the United States, Chili, Japan, Brazil and Peru were members of the jury for tasting. Cold starters and warm entrées… the groups impressed the observers with the quality of their recipes. The first three trophies were awarded to Chili, Japan and Taiwan respectively.

This event was also the occasion to launch a project entitled the “Observatory of meals and culinary practices” at Institut Paul Bocuse under the direction of Claude Fischler, a sociologist and director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research. The Observatory’s mission is to gather data on intercultural comparisons regarding eating behaviors in close cooperation with the partner universities in the Alliance and the Institut Paul Bocuse Research Center.