News Article

Cooking Crewe rises to culinary challenge


5/12/2005 11:39:08 AM


Gerry Crewe, Commercial Cooking (Advanced) instructor at College of the North Atlantic’s St. John’s campus, won Chef of the Year in both the provincial and national selections this year.

Chef Gerry Crewe was recognized not once, but twice at the Atlantic Culinary Conference and Competition held at College of the North Atlantic’s Prince Philip Drive campus in St. John's.

The Commercial Cooking (Advanced) instructor won Chef of the Year in both the provincial and national selections.

Though he says it was “tremendous” to win both awards in his own stomping grounds, he is most proud of his students at the campus, who also competed.

“Our junior team, consisting of our students and managed by graduate Roary Macpherson, won the gold,” said Crewe, proudly. “Roary was also one of three Canadian chefs that competed very recently in California and won first place.”

He says the other competing teams, chefs and managers from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island were impressed with the facility, instructors and the high caliber of students at CNA.

Crewe says it’s great recognition for CNA’s programs when instructors or students win these awards amongst their industry peers. This is part of the reason why he and his students take part, says Crewe. In the past six years he has won the provincial Chef of the Year Award three times and the Atlantic Chef of the Year Award (the Chef Alex Clavel Award) twice.

“Years ago I saw how our culinary programs were going and recognized that we needed to keep pace with the other provinces,” revealed Crewe.

“We’ve worked on making it a high profile trade. This has been made much easier with the support from President Pamela Walsh, campus administrator Debbie Newhook, Gail Gosse [former coordinator of the culinary arts programs] and fellow cooking instructor Patti Dooley.”

The next step for the culinary competitors is the Canadian Culinary Convention and Competition (held by the Canadian Culinary Federation – CCFCC – formerly known as the Canadian Federation of Chefs and Cooks) in Edmonton from June 9-11.

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