A second-year Lethbridge College culinary arts student placed third in a competition for junior members of the Canadian Chef’s Federation in Alberta.

The competition was held on March 12 at NAIT in Edmonton and Ryland Schinbein says he was anxious as it was his first time entered in the competition.

“Most of the kids who were up there said they had competed at least once before. I was very nervous,” he says.
“If the president of your branch recommended you to go up [to NAIT], then you had to submit a menu complete with photographs and recipes based on mandatory ingredients that you had to use.”
Schinbein says he worked really hard to get there and that the competition itself was quite difficult.
“You have to balance a lot on all your plates. Each plate needs a balance of texture, colour, shape and flavour,” he says.
“If you have something round on a plate, you can’t have anything else round, you have to have stuff up high and down low and you can’t repeat colours or ingredients, so it’s actually kind of complicated.”
Though challenging, he managed to get third place but not without the help of his instructor, Chef Doug Overes.
“It was actually hard. Luckily, I had Chef Doug helping me with most of it so it turned out to be really good.”
Schinbein says he also looks forward to competing again in the future.