RB Oxford Symposium Scholarship Winners 2009

Raymond Blanc is delighted to announce the names of the three young chefs he has selected to attend the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery 2009 as Raymond Blanc Scholars. They will participate in all the events that take place at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, from 11-13 September, where the conference will discuss the topic “Food and Language.” Raymond Blanc is supervising the Saturday night dinner, and the Raymond Blanc Scholars will be given the opportunity to assist the head chef of Le Manoir, Gary Jones, and Tim Kelsey, chef of St Catz. (Two more unsuccessful candidates will be offered places at the Symposium at reduced student rates.)

Ben Keeley, aged 20, is completing his degree at City College Norwich, and hopes to do a graduate research degree in gastronomy. Young as he is, he  has held a responsible position in the kitchen of a small boutique hotel in Norfolk. He’s looking forward to meeting the “journalists, scientists, sociologists, chefs and anthropologists” who attend the Symposium.

Grace O’Sullivan is a third year student of Culinary Arts at the Dublin Institute of Technology, and is doing an internship this summer in Sally Clarke’s restaurant in London. Grace is interested in “the history and symbolism of food” and hopes “that the Symposium will offer me the chance to learn and develop a deeper understanding of food, its history and its future.”

Yannis Mameletzis is a Greek-born, Yale and Oxford-educated HIV research scientist at St Peter’s College, Oxford, whose family ran a restaurant in America, and who financed part of his PhD by working as a chef at Jamie’s restaurant in Oxford. Yannis has been “discovered” by TV, and is now making a film about Greek food for American PBS. He says, “I admire the ethos of the Oxford Symposium…My dream in life… to marry food, science, education and doing something beyond myself.”

For more information: www.oxfordsymposium.org.uk