Culinary medals for what?

 Dear all, my friend Alan was writing a post on culinary medals, and I want to ad my view on this topic

So let's start with this for me absolute ridiculous way of how some private associations and guilds are giving out medals for nothing or some you need to pay for like the world MasterChef society that charges you a couple of hundred quid for a medal worth absolutely nothing and you don't need to prove any skills.

This phenomena is mostly common in culinary handicapped regions like middle east, eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America where some chefs looks like Christmas trees and can't cook a decent risotto for shit, unfortunately this is what the public things and I think throughout my travels I have meet the worst kind, totally without basic knowledge and call themself master chef, what a joke.

I do have some of these medals somewhere but all without value for nothing, but what I do have is the honorary lifetime worldchefs Avard medal that I trolly appreciate and feel humble to have received for my work as a board member.

If you look at the certificate below you will not find a name of any of the world president or chairman, what kind of joke is this?  what is this worth?  this is just an example and there is hundred of suspicious groups like this, what is your take on this? 

All these obscure countries have food traditions for sure and should be taken care of but please, don't call yourself MasterChef if you don't even know the basic skills.

Below is a photo of me taken from internet and they never asked och provide any explanation, even the country of origin is wrong, this kind is circulating around just to give this people some culinary weight that they cannot provide themself, do I care, yes, I do but can't do much about it, people who know they know.

 

Bright future and junior culinary brightness

 You know when you sometimes meet people that you instantly like and find ambitious, creative, humble and bad-ass talented? all thin imbedded in this young talented Serbian pastry chef that I had the pleasure to judge last week, I could pay for these desserts over again in any high-end restaurant in the world, fantastic!!

I can't wait to see what she and her National Serbian junior team will accomplish in the upcoming culinary world cup end of November, I will be there supporting and more from this event later.

Bravo Sef!!

Open Balkan 2026

 I am back from another amazing adventure in my home country of Serbia and the 2026 edition of Wine vision and Open Balkan culinary competition for the 5 th year in a row.

First thing is that I love the opportunity to invite judges to explore Serbian culture, rakija, history and food and this year's lineup was fantastic with Daren from Malaysia/London, Danny from Wales, Daniel from Germany, Jimmi from Sweden, Alan from France, Justinus from Lithuania and Gianluca from Italy, how lucky and fortunate I am to have chef friends like this from the global culinary scene and I feel humble that they took the time to come to Serbia.

The whole idea here is to not only compete but also to mentor young local chefs and give them feedback so they can raise the bar and become the best they can in the region and the world, many competitors have been competing several years now and you can clearly see that the feedback is paying off and they raise to the occasion this year again, excellent work and I cannot be more proud of the young Serbian chefs.

To spent time with chefs is always different on another strange level, we can talk about food, analyze, adapt and also enjoy with ease, chefs are really easy to satisfy even if people think differently and that's the power of the white jacket, like the 3 musketeers but many more. 

This would not be possible to organize without my brother Nikola from Junior chefs club Serbia who without his passion and determination non of this could happen and a big shout out to him.

Brate ti si najbolji!!

And to my lovely wife, thank you for being with me in Belgrade, love you.

Culinary team of Singapore at IKA

 I was just daydreaming and start to think of my time in Singapore and the decision we made to send a team to compete at the culinary Olympics in Stuttgart in 2020, what a fun time this was and all the preparation around it with trainings and tryouts, what a great team it was with talented chefs from my unit that put so much time on their own to stay top of things, I will always cherish this adventure and sweet memories.

Yes the team ended up with a silver medal

Majulah Singapura