Winners of Farm Africa charity football tournament announced

So last week you brought you the news that chefs and staff from sixteen leading UK restaurants will swap their kitchen whites for footballing colours as they line up for a major charity football tournament in aid of Farm Africa...

Well we can now bring you the winners as on Sunday the match took place and out of sixteen teams the Great British Chefs won the event. With the weekend raising over £2,700 the Great British Chefs team battled with more than 40 extremely hard-fought five-a-side games and beat the Cambridge-based Alimentum restaurant 3-1 in the final to lift the trophy exhausted, but elated.

The Chefs Football Tournament is the brainchild of the multi-award winning chef, Paul Foster, currently Head Chef at The Dining Room at Mallory Court Hotel near Royal Leamington Spa, and whose previous experience includes stints at renowned restaurants like Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons in Oxfordshire, French Laundry in California’s Napa Valley, Tuddenham Mill in Suffolk and Restaurant Sat Bains in Nottingham.

Paul came up with the idea of a football tournament fundraiser last year as a way of raising extra money for a fundraising climb of Mount Kilimanjaro that he undertook for Farm Africa’s Food for Good campaign. Food for Good is bringing restaurants and the food industry together to help tackle hunger.

The successful 2013 tournament, staged in Cambridge and won by the Colchester-based Direct Meats, created such a buzz in the restaurant world that Paul decided to make it an annual fundraiser for Farm Africa. And this year’s Birmingham tournament proved no less popular.

Looking back on a second highly successful tournament, Paul said: “After visiting Farm Africa projects in Kenya last year it was an honour to organise the football tournament for a second year. The interest has been massive and it is amazing how many teams have got involved. Hopefully this will help raise even more awareness about the brilliant work that Farm Africa does”

The line up of restaurants (some fielding two teams) in Birmingham was:

Alimentum (Cambridge), Birmingham Hippodrome (Birmingham), Casamia (Bristol), Corpus Christi College (Cambridge), Great British Chefs, House of Tides (Newcastle), Paul Ainsworth Number 6 Restaurant (Padstow), Purnell’s Restaurant (Birmingham), Restaurant Sat Bains (Nottingham), TRUE foods, Wellocks (Lomeshaye, Lancashire), The Dining Room at Mallory Court Hotel (Royal Leamington Spa),

Due to the popularity of the Birmingham event, a second tournament for chefs has been arranged to take place in Slough on Sunday 21 September.