Standing room only at The Staff Canteen Live 2019 on day two of ScotHot

The final day in Glasgow for The Staff Canteen Live 2019 in association with Westlands saw huge crowds watching three top chefs showcasing their amazing talent.

• What is The Staff Canteen Live?
• Find out more about Westlands

Sponsored by Westlands, The Staff Canteen demo stage was standing room only all day at ScotHot, kicking off with Jonathan MacDonald the chef owner of Ox and Finch. He cooked lamb neck, smoked potato and wild garlic salsa verde.

"It's nice to be able to showcase a bit of what we do in the restaurant," said Jonathan. "I remember coming to ScotHot as a young chef and watching demos, The Staff Canteen Live is a really valuable thing to do as it creates that connection with the students who help us on stage and young chefs who come to watch - they are the next generation of this industry."

The audience had the opportunity to not only try the dishes cooked by each chef but they tucked in to samples from our sponsor Major International and our headline sponsor Westlands.

Will Boers, Growers Manager from Westlands, said: "We started supporting The Staff Canteen Live seven years ago, being headline sponsor is so important because it puts our brand right at the top of the game, it gives us great social media recognition on all channels and we see being a part of it as a massive benefit to us."

Sarah Johnson, Marketing Assistant for Major International, said: "The audience all got to try our tasters and in terms of brand awareness, working with The Staff Canteen Live has been very useful for us. At times during the demo I turned around and there were so many people watching the stage so it's definitely a great way to get your name out there to an audience that may not have heard of you before."

Cooking Scottish cod, celeriac and grapes was Stuart Ralston, he owns Edinburgh based restaurant Aizle and it's the second time he's taken to The Staff Canteen stage. 

He said: "It was a great crowd. It's important for chefs to get out of the kitchen and do demos so younger chefs can watch and be inspired. Anything you go to where you can meet other chefs, you will take a lot away from it.

"When I was a young chef I used to come to ScotHot, I won a medal here when I was 16 - it's definitely better now especially as The Staff Canteen bring a lot of great chefs to the stage."

During each demo the chefs were able to use a Rational oven, a great piece of kit which the team from rational installed on our stage.

Adam Knights, Marketing Director for Rational UK, said: "We've found working with The Staff Canteen at ScotHot a great experience. At Rational, we consider ourselves to be a chef company so to be with The Staff Canteen gave us a chance to speak to the chefs directly. It was great to see the chefs on stage using our product and I would recommend any company to work with The Staff Canteen, they are really supportive and we really benefited from working with The Staff Canteen at ScotHot." 

Bringing the show to a close was head chef of Michelin-starred The Peat Inn, Nick Briggs. He cooked Mushroom risotto, St Andrew's Bay lobster, roast pepper and almond puree, calamari tempura and squid ink. 

It was his first live demo and despite being nervous he produced a brilliant dish, he said: "It was a fantastic experience! It's great for young chefs to come to events like this, they are a real inspiration and they help you see outside of the four walls of the kitchen you may be working in."

The Staff Canteen Live could not happen without our headline sponsor Westlands and all of our other great sponsors: Major International, Rational, Quality Meat Scotland, Seafood From Scotland, Pommery, IMC, Campbells & Co, Wenlock Spring and Thermomix.

We also couldn’t do it without the brilliant students from City of Glasgow College.