MONTREAL — Chef Danny Smiles usually cooks in the kitchen of Montreal’s Le Bremner (sister restaurant to celebrity chef Chuck Hughes’ Garde Manger) but, come June, the chef de cuisine will be competing inside a racing sailboat in Italy during the S. Pellegrino Cooking Cup.
The annual culinary event will be held in collaboration with the Venetian Yacht Club, Compagnia della Vela, June 13 and 14. “It’s an unusual cooking challenge,” says Smiles. “Creating a winning dish in a sailboat galley while it’s racing around a course in the Venetian lagoon is hard to imagine. But I’m up for it and honoured S. Pellegrino selected me to compete as its first Canadian competitor.”
The two-day event will host 10 representatives from across the globe. In the first half of the two-part competition, toques will prepare a signature dish at the S.Pellegrino and Acqua Panna Young Chef of the Year 2014 competition, voted by judges. Then, they will compete to win the S. Pellegrino Cooking Cup, by preparing a dish inside a racing sailboat.
Last year, chefs hailed from Australia, Austria, Belgium, China, the U.A.E., Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, and the U.S. The full list of competitors will be announced in early June.
