Frederick Forster, head chef at Nuovo Restaurant has landed the ultimate prize in the culinary world by being crowned The National Chef of the Year 2011 winner by the Craft Guild of Chefs.

Frederick's victory came on the back of an exhilarating final at The Restaurant Show, held at Earls Court 2. In a two-hour cook-off between the final eight contenders it was Frederick's menu, style and execution of ingredients that saw the judges declare the Nuovo Restaurant chef the winner.

His winning dishes included sauté scallops with crab "Biegnet" and roasted breast of duck with braised thigh flavoured with smoked bacon. The illustrious award has seen top chefs from all across the country competing for the title.

Last month, the field was whittled down from forty contenders to the final eight following highly competitive semi-finals in Sheffield and London. Legendary figures in the culinary world Bruce Poole, Chris Galvin, Angela Hartnett, Atul Kochhar, Vivek Singh, Andrew Bennett, Gary Hunter, Mark Flanagan, Henry Brosi, and Graham
Hornigold, were on hand to judge the dishes cooked up by the finalists.

David Mulcahy, organiser of the competition and vice president of the Craft Guild of Chefs, said: "All our congratulations go to Frederick on his fabulous achievement, in what was a tremendous end to another fantastic National Chef of the Year contest. In fact, the standard of quality on display throughout the entire competition this year has been remarkable.

"The dishes produced by all the final eight were of such a high standard. Choosing a winner was never going to be easy, but all the judges were in agreement that Frederick created a winning menu from the original basket of ingredients. His menu was innovative, well planned and brilliantly executed on the day under enormous pressure."