The culinary competition team learned on April 22 that they placed fourth out of 29 other teams at the State Competition in Pasadena, CA, March 15-18.

“We did pretty well compared to the past few competitions. I think we did our best,” Mary Avila said. ”This year we had three more mentor chefs who helped us a lot, so we had a lot of confidence.”

Having confidence going into a competition like this is advantageous for the extreme conditions the team is put under.

“We have one hour to make a three course meal. We have to make two of everything, one for plating and one for tasting. We can only use two camper stoves and no electricity. There are chefs from all around the world that judge the competition at a gourmet level. We have to include certain knife skills such as a Julienne which is a 1/8″x1/8″x2.5″ inch matchstick type cut,” co-captain Jordan Marchbanks said.

The four days of the competition consisted of check in on the first day, cooking seminars throughout the weekend and then two days of competition.

“We competed on Sunday, which was the first day of competition. We were the last team to compete (on that day) and all the judges were impressed, to the point in which they started taking pictures of us,” Avila said.

Being able to impress the judges that much meant taking the competition seriously.

“We practice months on end from September to the last days before competition,” co-captain Lexi Ammirati said. “We try to get in as much time together as possible. We practice our knife skills and develop our menu and concepts that we will use at competition. We meet three days a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.”

As the competition is now over and the results are in, team memebers are looking towards next year.

“I am pretty excited for next year’s team. We have a lot of potential. I am pretty sure we are going to do great,” Avila said. “We are going to start earlier and come up with the menu sooner in order to be able to have a perfect menu.”