Founded in 2002 by vice president Steve Munkley, the annual Graduate Awards put young chefs (aged 23 and under) to the test, in both the Kitchen and Pastry examinations.

Not so much a competition, participants must achieve 85% or higher in order to enter the Hall of Fame, with the highest achiever in each automatically seeded into next year’s Young National Chef of the Year final.

The final exam took place last week (21 August) at University College Birmingham.

This year’s finalists are as below:

Kitchen Graduate Finalists:

• Ben Cowley, Simpsons Restaurant
• George Birtwell, TRUEfoods
• Isabel Wallace-Hadrill, Coutts Bank
• Jordon Powell, 1877 Restaurant - Wotton House Hotel
• Zachary Hermon, Dormy House
• Chor Fai Shek, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay
• Bronwen Jenkins, Royal Garden Hotel
• Josh Mcgeoghan, Colettes at The Grove
• Adam Nevin, Alyn Williams at the Westbury
• Faye Natalie De Souza, Restaurant Associates at Deloitte

Pastry chef finalists:

• Ieuan Davies, Pennyhill Park Hotel and Spa
• Evie Mae Moore, Shangri-La Hotel At The Shard
• Sofia Petrova, Ham Yard Hotel
• Emile Druart, The Vineyard
• Emma Lawson, Northcote Manor

Former YNCOTY winner, Ruth Hansom, said: “The Graduate Awards is about improving and testing out basic culinary skills and so I would encourage every young chef to enter.

“You never know what’s going to come up in the exam. For example, we had rabbit on ours which isn’t something I would normally prepare as part of my day job but this exam forced me to try something different.”

Follow the Awards on social media using #CGCGradAwards.