Manitoba high school students head to Paris after winning national culinary competition

A team of high school students from Manitoba will represent Canada in an international culinary competition final in Paris after winning a national title Sunday. They will go head-to-head against France’s champion team later this month.

Five finalist teams contested in the National Final of La Tablée des Chefs’ Culinary Brigades in Montreal. The event was hosted by Ricardo Larrivée, a world-renowned chef, popularly known as Ricardo.

More than a hundred teams of high school students aged 12 to 17 took part in competitions across the country this year. The culinary competition tested the knowledge and skills students have developed over the past few months through the Culinary Brigades program, which aims to foster food autonomy and raise awareness around food-related issues.

Ricardo, founder of Ricardo Media, and 20-year spokesperson for La Tablée des Chefs, watched the high-stakes kitchen battle unfold with pride. The intense training isn’t just about crafting podium-worthy dishes, he explained, it is about building foundational life skills.

“The beauty with school and cooking is that you don’t have to be a chef in your life, but you will cook for the rest of your life,” Ricardo said. “We know that if you know how to feed yourself and your friends and your family, you’ll have a better life, you’ll be healthier.”

The program turned teenagers into problem-solving teammates who have to face down a mystery box of ingredients, building a sense of self-esteem in the process that can stretch beyond the kitchen.

“My heart was beating very fast,” said Aidan Jusoh from École secondaire Félix-Leclerc. “It was nerve-wracking, but once I got to cooking it really just released.”

Jean-François Archambault, executive director and founder of La Tablée des Chefs, sees the success of teams as proof that food literacy can change lives.

“There’s more than 350 public high schools in this country. We want to scale this program across the country,” Archambault said. “So, we already have some great partners, but anybody who want to join with us and get this into their local schools, we’re more than happy to engage and help them out to get the program in as many schools as we can.”

The non-profit organization Kitchen Brigades is an after-school culinary program. Students participate in over 40 hours of chef-led workshops to learn to cook and reduce food waste, while also learning food autonomy and life skills like teamwork, leadership and creativity.

The program currently operates in almost 400 schools across Canada.

Avery Van Solkema was part of the Manitoba team that won and will be heading to Paris. “It was a real challenge to be creative enough and know all these techniques to be able to push forward to where I am now,” he said.

The road to the international stage in Paris required more than just stamina; it demanded culinary resourcefulness.

Faced with high-pressure situations and mystery ingredients, the team relied heavily on the foundational skills drilled into them during months of intense training.

“Our chef teaches us lots of different techniques that can be applied to different types of ingredients. Like most hard veggies we would puree and make a sauce with. You know, many soft veggies we might make a confit with, add pops of color. So that’s our sort of strategy to find out what we should do with our secret ingredients,” Van Solkema said.

The adaptable playbook allowed the team to remain calm and systematic under the ticking clock, transforming unknown local produce into podium-worthy dishes.

The winning team will have the honour of representing Canada in Paris for the culinary competition in another battle, against Collège Louis Nucéra from June 17 to 21.