Competition Corner International Chefs Day
Meet the new ACF Competition Committee Chair!
ACF Chef Vanessa Marquis, CEC, AAC, chair of the newly created International Chefs Day Task Force, announced there were 456 events held for International Chefs Day on Oct. 20, which were attended by 3,678 chefs and reached 140,749 children around the world. Turn to p. 32 to read about ACF members who hosted events for Childhood Nutrition Day on Oct. 16. If you are interested in joining in on the planning for next year’s events, contact Chef Marquis at vnmarquis@gmail.com.
ACF Chef Frank C. Costantino, Ed.D., CEC, CCE, CEPC, CCA, AAC, is the assistant vice president of academic affairs and dean of the School of Hospitality Management and the Culinary Institute of New York at Monroe College. He also serves as executive chef of The Dining Lab at Monroe College. Chef Costantino coached the winning 2022 and 2023 ACF National Student Team champions.
Apply to Compete in the 2024 ACF Knowledge Bowl The 2024 rules and guidelines for the ACFEF Baron H. Galand Culinary Knowledge Bowl have been released. Start putting together a team and get ready for an exciting competition year! Application deadline is May 14. Learn more at acfchefs.org/knowledgebowl.
Q: What’s your background in competitions?
A: I’ve been coaching college students for 23 years now. More recently, in the last 15 years since I’ve been at the Culinary Institute of New York at Monroe College, we’ve won over 1,200 medals in competitions. We’ve won multiple regional championships, and our team was the Northeast regional champion and the ACF National Student Team champions the last two years. After 20 years as a judge and 25 years as a competitor, it’s been my ultimate goal to become chair of the competition committee. I am so blessed to have that opportunity.
Q: What are some of the benefits of competing? A: Competition is critical for any [culinary school] program, for a number of reasons. Most importantly, they bring pride and passion to the campus. When other students see the students on the competition team practicing and training, they get a sense of the value of the program, whether they compete or not. But for me, [competitions] are a way to accelerate culinary students’ growth and trajectory in the industry. I believe in this so much that I actually wrote my dissertation about it; I talked to 10 coaches across the nation and about 250 students and came up with the conclusion that competitions accelerate students’ movement in the industry up to an average 1.2 years faster than students who have not had competition experience.
Q: What’s in store for ACF competitions this year? A: We want to get people interested. Right now [at press time] we’re in the application process for regional qualifiers for all five of our categories. So that’s Chef of the Year, Pastry Chef of the Year, Student Chef of the Year, Student Pastry Chef of the Year and Student Team National Championship, which is the new
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