Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on May 2010

[slideshow id=2 w=650 h=433]

The problem: your hotel employs dozens of young cooking-school grads who are toiling in obscurity. The solution: for just one day, let them be the stars of the show. At the Hilton Tokyo’s sixth annual Culinary Creative Challenge last month, a group of 30 up-and-coming chefs, patissiers and banquet cooks took over the kitchen at Le Pergolèse restaurant. The competition was organized into three categories (Western, Chinese/Japanese and pastry), with a panel of judges that included Yoshitsugu Suzuki, owner-chef of the eponymous Michelin-starred eatery in Meguro, Nobuyoshi Ozaki, of the Tokyo-based Ecole de Patisserie et de Cuisine Kokusai, and yours truly, Metropolis’ gluttonous editor-in-chief. Joined by three senior Hilton staff, we the jury munched our way through 30 ingeniously conceived, dazzlingly presented dishes. Chef Fumihiro Minohara touched our hearts as well as our palates with an homage to his infant son, a fanciful seafood platter he called “Boy’s Festival”; Hideaki Suzuki’s painterly dessert featured a mad swirl of caramel adorning a cherry chiboust; Tomoyo Ueda’s mozzarella-stuffed mushrooms, dabbed with pesto, were almost too beautiful to eat. But eat we did, judging the dishes on taste, temperature, presentation and a host of other criteria. For the second year in a row, top honors went to 24-year-old Kazuko Maniwa, whose cheese tart and chocolate financier would be right at home in one of Tokyo’s leading bakeries. And, maybe, someday soon they will be.

[youtube]3bB4OAgtuY4[/youtube]

Hilton Tokyo, 6-6-2 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku. Tel: 03-3344-5111. Nearest stn: Shinjuku, west exit. www.hilton.co.uk/tokyo