This year's Roux Scholarship 2016 final takes place on Monday, at Westminster Kingsway College, London and there are six chefs hoping to win the prestigious title - Paul Matthews
The Staff Canteen spoke to each finalist to find out more about them, their cooking style and why they entered the competition.
Name: Paul Matthews
Region: London
Age: 28
Works at: Vacherin at Fieldfisher
Job role: Head chef
Cooking background: I found a passion for it from a young age through cooking for my family, a lot of chefs have a similar story. It was actually Jamie Oliver who inspired me to be a chef from watching NakedChef on the TV as a youngster and then it just materialised through cookery classes at school. It was such a great buzz and I wanted to chase that, which is what I’ve done. I stuck to it, put my head down and now I’m here.
Who influences you most in cooking? I fell into training under chefs that have done time at Le Gavroche with the Roux brothers. So my training has been very much Roux throughout my entire career until I became a head chef. I actually won a competiton eight years ago which was judged by Michel Roux Jr and Albert Roux, an internal competition for Compass. Their passion for classic cookery was what I was taught at college and that has stayed with me throughout my whole career. Obviously is has started to modernise now but classical cookery is an integral part of the way I cook and what I put on a plate.
How are you feeling about the Roux Scholarship? In 2008 Dan Cox became a Roux Scholar and I fell under him as an apprentice out of college. He literally took me under his wing and I had one-on-one training from him daily and his head chef was David Shinder who had previously done 10 years at Le Gavroche. I worked under two passionate chefs who showed me everything which has really benefited me. I just thought, as Dan won it when he was 28 and I’ve now been head chef for a couple of years and I’ve started to feel really confident in every part of the kitchen and what I can achieve; I thought I was ready this year more than any other year. I’ve been building up to the Roux Scholarship by doing other competitions; I came third against Alyn Williams in 2012. So it’s not my first competition and I felt quite confident going in this year. Now that I’m 28 I’ve only got two more attempts to do it and I will take them but I plan to do it in one and I just think that I’m ready now. To become a scholar it’s not about winning a competition, it’s far more than that.
What are your ambitions in cooking? I have an investor, so I do plan to go forward and do something myself but obviously if I became a scholar the wisest thing to do really is to start building a brigade of scholars for myself and for the future industry. Scholars are respected and you have to be a certain caliber so why not build a brigade of them? If I was to become a scholar the best thing for me to do would be to put my chefs through it and test their abilities.
