Wadebridge School young chefs treated to lunch at St Moritz Hotel

A team of young chefs from Wadebridge School were treated to lunch at the new Sea Side restaurant at the St Moritz Hotel as a reward for their winning burger recipe as part of the schools' Food Challenge.

Joe Brewer, 13; Daisy Brown, 13; Bryony Lewis, 14, and Harry Brain, 13, made up the team that designed, developed and made a recipe and marketing plan for their burger titled: Deer Snail, I Want To Eat You.

St Moritz Hotel head chef, James O'Conner, was invited by the school to judge the competition and the winning team's recipe incorporating influences from Italian, French and New Zealand cuisine certainly caught his attention.

Mr O'Conner decided that the team's venison-based burger, which was topped with mozzarella and included a unique snail shaped roll was the best tasting and had the most effective marketing plan of the entrants.

"The standard was very high; the kids all put a lot of thought into their dishes, said Mr O'Connor. "I felt 'Deer Snail' was inventive and tasted great. Harry had even baked his own bread roll which showed how involved they were in the project. I was very keen to support this event because I want to encourage young people to come into the industry and activities like this can really help engage people in cooking. Seeing these youngsters take part in the challenge and produce different dishes is great. I live in the community and I want to involve local people as much as possible in the great food that we're creating at the hotel so this was a great deal of fun."

Team member Bryony said: "We worked really well as a team. We took ingredients from cultures around the world and combined them to create our burger. Thanks to James O'Connor for judging and to the St Moritz Hotel for the prize of an amazing lunch at Sea Side. James didn't say anything about our burger during the judging so we thought we hadn't won," said Daisy. "We couldn't believe it when he picked ours as the winner. It was a great surprise."