On 9th of September 2016 the three Baltic states – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – met in Riga, Latvia to hold the very first Baltic competition for chefs – "Baltic Culinary Heritage". The competition was organized by chefs associations of all three Baltic states and supported by The World Association of Chef’s Societies (WACS).

            The competition was held during the fair "Riga Food" which is the biggest food industry fair in Baltic states. Each country organized a team with four members – chef, pastry chef, young chef and manager, who was helping with suggestions and planning but was not allowed to step in the box.

            During 6 hours each team prepared three course meal "Baltic Culinary Heritage" which included a starter from whole pike-perch, main course from whole rabbit and a dessert with sea-buckthorn and biscuit dough. All the rules of competition was based on WACS culinary rules and the food was tasted and judged by international jury provided by WACS – Ulrich  Frehde, Sweden, chairman of the jury, WACS B grade culinary judge; Franciane Tartari, Sweden, Member of Women WACS – Certificated Pastry Juror WACS, WACS B grade culinary judge; Jakob Magnússon, Iceland, WACS managing director, WACS B grade culinary judge; Daniel Ayton, United Kingdom, World Vice president of the World Master chefs society, WACS B grade culinary judge; Gary Filbey, United Kingdom, Vice president of the world master chefs society, WACS A grade culinary judge.

            Despite the very tight competition between Latvian and Estonian teams, in the end – and just with a couple of points more – the Latvian team (chef – Dinars Zvidrins, pastry chef – Ina Poliscenko, young chef – Kristiana Steinfelde and manager – Viesturs Lasmanis) won the very first Baltic culinary competition, leaving Estonians (chef – Kaido Metsa, pastry chef – Rein Välimets, young chef – Villem Kasemets, manager – Hardi Nurmine) in the honorable second place. The Jury also evaluated winner in the category "The Best Young Chef of the Baltic states" – Erikas Janerikas (Lithuania).

            Another winner was chosen by the audiance, who had a chance to book a table at the competition and have a three course meal prepared by the competitors. The winner of the audience jury was Lithuania (chef – Andrius Kubilius, pastry chef – Toma Piskarskaitė, young chef – Erikas Janerikas, manager – Arūnas Stoškus).

            As Svetlana Riskova, the president of Latvian Chefs club admitted, the idea about that kind of competition is not new: "We have very friendly realtionships with Estonian and Lithuanian chef societies and we talked about this idea every time we met, so finally we sat down together and started to create the rules. It is a very big step for our assocciations to organize such a big project and I’m happy to say that the first competition went very well." Ulrich  Frehde, the chairman of the jury, also agrees with this statement: "The organization of the competition was very good. It was my first time in here as a judge and I was pleasantly impressed. The professional skills all three teams showed were satisfactory and I can say, that the culinary level in Baltics is very high."

Liga Sudare