“The Next Chef Award at INTERNORGA has proven in past years to be a career launching pad for talented young chefs,” said Johann Lafer. The famous TV chef is the initiator and patron of the contest that is being hosted for the fifth time at INTERNORGA in 2020. The young chefs will be demonstrating their outstanding creativity and cooking skills in a series of exciting challenges. The promising youngsters will face a panel of expert judges who will be sampling and rating the quality of the culinary offerings, including two-star chef Thomas Martin (Jacobs Restaurant), Next Chef Award winner in 2016 Jonas Straube (Coast by East) and Stefan Wilke (The Fontenay Hotel). They will be joined by two-star chefs Karlheinz Hauser (Seven Seas), Marco Müller (Rutz, Berlin) and Christoph Rüffer (the Haerlin restaurant in the Fairmont Four Seasons Hotel), as well as Thomas Imbusch (Restaurant 100/200), Ralf Kroschel (Volkswagen Betriebsgastronomie), and Rupert Kein (Sea Chefs). Also on the jury are Next Chef Award winners in 2018 and 2019: Marianus von Hörsten (Restaurant Klinker) and Kevin Gedike (Hoppe’s Restaurant).

The Next Chef Award final for the winners of the live challenges takes place on 16 March. The challenge awaiting the finalists is to recreate a dish that TV chef Johann Lafer has made without knowing what the ingredients are!