Culinary Institute of Savannah Wins Awards at ACF Southeastern Conference

#1257 | March 2, 2012

SAVANNAH –Savannah Technical College culinary arts students and its department head for the Culinary Institute of Savannah received top honors at the American Culinary Federation (ACF) Southeastern Regional Conference in Winston-Salem, N.C., February 20-22, 2012.

     STC’s Culinary Arts Knowledge Bowl team won the Baron H. Galand Culinary Knowledge Bowl Southeast regional competition and earned a gold medal. Team members include Joshua Lopez (team captain), Jocelyn Brantley, Cameron Harper, Joseph Poulin and Angela Real.

     STC’s Culinary Institute of Savannah Department Head and Instructor Chef Jean Yves Vendeville was honored with the top ACF award – the President’s Medallion – at the ACF Southeastern Regional Conference. The President’s Medallion recognizes the ultimate honor for a lifetime of commitment and service to the standards and excellence ACF exemplifies. Chef Vendeville also presented a workshop at the convention, “Contemporary Molding with Sugar.”

     The Knowledge Bowl team is one of the final four that will compete at the national ACF convention competition in Orlando, Fla., (July 14-17). This is the third year STC will have sent a team to compete at the national convention. Four of this year’s team members were on the Knowledge Bowl team that competed in nationals last year.

     “Our team’s win on a regional level shows the excellent culinary education Savannah Technical College provides,” said Chef Vendeville. He described last year’s national competition as a learning experience for the team. “This year’s team has come back stronger and really wants to win the national title,” said Chef Vendeville. “They are working harder and training differently to build the confidence it takes to win the national competition.”

     To earn a gold medal in the Knowledge Bowl a team must score an average of more than 600 points in two of the five games in the competition. The 2012 STC team had already earned 600 points at the end of its first two games – “creaming the competition,” according to Chef Vendeville. Last year’s Knowledge Bowl team won the Southeastern regional competition, but only earned a bronze medal with 400 to 500 points.

     First held at the 1992 ACF National Convention in Washington, D.C., the Baron H. Galand Culinary Knowledge Bowl is the brainchild of Carol Kelly, a member of the Nation’s Capital ACF chapter and a culinary instructor. She used the competition format to test her vocational high school students. As the competition grew, it was named after former ACF President and long-time advocate of apprentices and junior members Baron H. Galand, CEC. Today, the competition includes sensory questions, hidden pictures, and of course challenging culinary, baking, nutrition, sanitation and math questions.

     The Culinary Institute of Savannah offers ACF-accredited diploma and degree programs in culinary arts and has been described as the “best in the U.S.A” by its ACF accreditation review board. Under the leadership of Chef Vendeville, student teams have won three consecutive ACF southeast regional championships – in 2010 in the Hot Food Team competition and back-to-back wins in the Knowledge Bowl competition in 2011 and 2012. There are more than 200 students enrolled in the program, which opened a second teaching kitchen in Effingham, Ga. this year.

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