City lad carves victory at global culinary Olympics

The 16-year-old, who picked up an interest in culinary arts from his father Umasankar Dhanapal, also a chef, placed Chennai on the global culinary map through his noteworthy participation at the IKA Culinary Olympics.

The Internationale Kochkunst Ausstellung (IKA) Culinary Olympics 2020, which concluded last month in Germany’s Stuttgart, involved over 2,000 chefs from 59 countries around the world battling head-to-head for top medals. Yeshwanth, who was one of the youngest competitors, managed to win four silver medals for India in the quadrennial (once in four years) competition.

“This was my second experience at the Culinary Olympics. The first time I took part in 2016, I only took part in the category of live fruit and vegetable carving. This time, I wanted to step it up and take part in categories of live carving, classic carving and two other categories of artistic fondant and sugar sculptures. I won silver medals in all the four categories, which was very overwhelming. I was the youngest among the chefs competing there, and many were surprised to see someone so young like me participate in such a prestigious competition,” shares an excited Yeshwanth, who was the sole participant from our country at the international event. The carvings that he can create within minutes are usually learnt by hotel management students aged 18 and above, as they begin their formal culinary arts education.

While live and classic carving included carving flowers and patterns on vegetables and fruits like pumpkin, watermelon and honey melon, the artistic showpieces required him to work on sugar sculptures in advance and carry them to the Culinary Olympics. “I travelled to China, Singapore and Czech Republic to train under some of the best chefs and learned to make fondant sculptures from them for the competition. Each day, I practised for at least six hours through guidance from my father. But competing in Germany gave me additional challenges of fetching all the ingredients from local markets while using Google translate to understand German,” recalls the teen chef, who is in his Class 12th through open-schooling so as to devote more time to culinary arts.

Yeshwanth’s aim, he says, is to be the best chef in the world. “I want to be an all-rounder at culinary arts and become the best chef in the world,”he asserts.