Accra, Nov. 28, GNA - An international culinary competition for 2010 is underway in Accra to bring out the best in cooking artistry and to help enhance standards in the culinary industry.

The two-day competition, organised by the Ghana Chefs Association, (GCA) is being contested by professional chefs from Ghana and Kenya. The first contest was held in Kenya last year. Mr Nutepe Kartey-Attipoe, Executive Chef and Vice President of GCA, in an interview with Ghana News Agency, in Accra, said the competition offered an opportunity for professionals from various African countries to build relationships with each other and to learn from each other's gift of the art of cooking.

He said currently Ghana's culinary industry was far below the requirement of international standards and, therefore, needed to be enhanced and developed to satisfy international visitors, tourists and investors in the oil and gas industry.

Mr Kartey-Attipoe blamed the poor performance of the industry on the lack of an established culinary art institution devoted to the training of professionals in specialties in the various clarifications of catering services.

These include quality menu preparations and classification of the various courses that form a complete meal in a hotel or restaurant setting. He said with the absence of such training the performances of graduates from the various catering and vocational training institutions and the Polytechnics were below the standard international requirement. "The few privileged ones have the opportunity to learn or understudy foreign expatriates who are contracted by the various hotels for a period and, therefore, are able to manipulate some of their talents for our benefit," he said.

Mr Kartey-Attipoe complained about the ageing nature of the few professional chefs in Ghana who had acquired much knowledge from expatriates over the years, saying the lack of appreciation of cookery as a profession by the youth had contributed to situation. He appealed to the Government and Ministry of Tourism to commit more budgetary allocation to the expansion of training for catering and culinary art in Ghana, saying, "If Ghana is to improve in her tourism industry it must commit more resources and devote much attention to develop the performance of catering and food artistic services." The Ministry of Tourism should also promote Food Tourism in Ghana as a boost to the industry and to encourage Ghanaians to appreciate their local foods and sustain traditional dishes.

He urged managements of various catering and vocational training institutions to redesign their syllabuses to include all culinary specifications and separate the various fields of specialisation to ensure professionalism in all aspects of catering. "At the moment, Ghana does not have a pastry expert, therefore, all that are being done in that area are substandard work," he observed. 28 Nov. 10