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Pierre Koffmann receives Special Craft Guild of Chefs Award

Pierre Koffmann has received the Craft Guild of Chefs’ Special Achievement Award for ‘outstanding contribution to the industry’, at the association’s 17th annual awards ceremony last night.

Koffmann, who last year ran a pop-up restaurant on the roof of Selfridges, received his award ahead of next month’s launch of his eponymous restaurant at The Berkeley Hotel, his first in London since closing the three Michelin-starred La Tante Claire in 2002.

Thirteen additional chefs from across the catering industry were also recognised for their work at the ceremony held at the London Lancaster Hotel, with Sat Bains, chef proprietor of Restaurant Sat Bains, beating Hibiscus chef Claude Bosi and Trinity’s Adam Byatt to the Restaurant Chef of the Year title.

Chris and Jeff Galvin’s Galvin La Chappelle was also recognised, winning the New Restaurant of the Year award over Hix Restaurant and Kitchen W8, while Alistair Barlow from Peach Pubs’ The Fleece in Witney was deemed the Pub Chef of the Year.

Andrew Green, CGC chairman, said: “We had such a diverse mix of chefs to choose from this year, and each and every winner thoroughly deserves the kudos and prestige that comes with a Craft Guild of Chefs award,” said Andrew. “In football terms, they are officially elevated into the premier league.”

To view all the nominees for the CGC Awards 2010, click here.

Pierre Koffmann scoops Craft Guild of Chefs Special Award

Pierre Koffmann, the former chef-patron of the three-Michelin-starred La Tante Claire, was presented with the Special Award at the Craft Guild of Chefs Awards last night.

The iconic chef was recognised ahead of the opening of his first new permanent restaurant next month at London's Berkeley Hotel after an eight-year hiatus. Last year saw Koffmann's temporary return to the London restaurant scene with a pop-up eatery at Selfridges.

Sat Bains was named Restaurant Chef of the year for his Restaurant Sat Bains in Nottingham, while Sarah Hartnett from The Park Lane Hotel was awarded the title Pastry Chef of the Year.

Contract caterers were also big winners, scooping five of the 14 awards at the ceremony at the Lancaster London Hotel.

French caterer Sodexo received double recognition with Derek Reilly and Steve Golding (Sodexo Prestige) both walking away winners, while Richard Bowden of Compass Group also took home an award.

More than 600 people attended the event including Master of the Royal Household and president of the Craft Guild of Chefs, Air Vice Marshal David Walker OBE.

The awards, now in the 17th year, recognised 14 chefs from all aspects of the profession.

Return of the French chefs

Once again London's restaurant scene is liberally peppered with great French cooks and big fresh flavours

The French are back. Perhaps they've never really been away. After all, the (very British) Galvin brothers have been keeping the tricolour flying at the Galvin Bistrot de Luxe and La Chapelle, and there's the remarkable Terroirs on William IV Street. But now, suddenly, the capital's kitchens are being re-populated by some of the golden French culinary kings of the past.

Wunderkind of the 90s Bruno Loubet, once of Bistro Bruno and L'Odeon has come back from 8 years in Australia to take up residence at The Zetter on Clerkenwell Road. Joel Antunes, whose chocolate soup with pistachio cream still haunts my dreams since I ate it at Les Saveurs in 1995, is the power behind the kitchen door at the Park Plaza in Westminster and the grizzled legend of La Tante Claire, Pierre Koffman, has decided to get back where he belongs permanently after his stint at the eye-poppingly successful pop-up restaurant on the roof of Selfridges. Koffmann's, on the site of the Boxwood Café in the Berkeley Hotel, is set to open on 15 July.

You might wonder what's drawn them back to London. Well, it must be the gastronomic vigour of the city, mustn't it? But it can't have escaped your notice that all of these maestros have found safe havens in hotels, which seems prudent in these times.

French chefs have been turning up here ever since the revolution released a raft of privately employed talent onto the open market. Escoffier, the great grandfather of modern cooking, teamed up with César Ritz to change the way kitchens and hotels worked and marketed themselves 120 years ago. Then there were the visiting French chef's consultants such as Louis Outhier and Jean-Michel Lorain, not to mention Anton Mosimann, who influenced London hotel dining rooms in the 1980s. It tells you something of the tenor of the times that they were all French. Except for Mosimann, who's Swiss. In those days, when it came to eating we were still in thrall to all things French.

Things have moved on a bit since then, and you might think that French food is a bit old hat in these sushi-driven, Italophile, chic-Indian days. However, recently eating the grub of Bruno Loubet, Joel Antunes and Pierre Koffman was like meeting up with an old flame and finding them just as delicious as they were when you parted.

They have changed, it's true. Gone is the Michelin fol-de-rol and highly-wrought plate poetry. It's back to basics for each of these chefs, back to their roots, and it would seem their roots are particularly vigorous. Bruno Loubet serves up mauricette snails and meatballs; royale de champignon; potted shrimps and mackerel, cucumber salad, Melba toast; breast of wood pigeon, cauliflower, almond and quinoa giblet sauce. Joel Antunes does a mean pork terrine; gazpacho with tomato sorbet; grilled john dory with sauce antiboise, artichoke and trumpet courgette; pigs' feet with gnocchi soufflé and white wine tart. Pierre Koffman, who has always said that he wanted to do good brasserie food, now has a chance to do so at the Berkeley (in his La Tante Claire days, Monsieur Koffman was famous for never telling the kitchen staff what was going to be on the lunchtime menu until just before the doors opened). To judge by the dishes at the Selfridges pop-up, he has lost none of his ability to conjure up stonking flavours from all manner of ingredients.

In fact, if there is one characteristic that unites these three very different culinary characters, it is their emphasis on the purity and power of flavour. Bruno Loubet may lob in the odd highly individual combination (mackerel and piccalilli tart with green gazpacho dressing), and Joel Antunes borrows from here and there with epicurean discrimination (lobster Cobb salad; lamb shoulder harissa with chickpeas) but still when you tuck in there's no polite sequencing of exquisite effects. It's socko, flavour to the fore. Quite old fashioned in fact. But then old fashioned seems to be the new fashion, and there's nothing wrong with that, is there?

Apprentice Chef: Conor Stein, the Royal Garden Hotel
Banqueting Chef: Steve Golding, Sodexo Prestige
Competition Chef: Richard Bowden, Compass Group
Contract Catering Chef: Derek Reilly, Sodexo
Cost Sector Chef: Robert Kennedy, Royal Military Academy
Development Chef: Phil Rimmer, Apetito
Education Chef: Norman Robertson, Ayr College
Ethnic Chef: Jitin Joshi, Vatika Restaurant
Pastry Chef: Sarah Hartnett, the Park Lane Hotel
New Restaurant of the Year: Galvin La Chapelle
Pub Restaurant Chef: Alistair Barlow, the Fleece
Restaurant Chef: Sat Bains, Restaurant Sat Bains
Young Chef: Adam Smith, The Ritz
Special Award: Pierre Koffmann