CINY Students Earn Bronze at the World Junior Chef Battle in Thailand

With just minutes to go in the Thailand World Junior Chef Battle’s second day of competition, the almost-complete dishes arrive in front of Gabriella Grande, Monroe University and Culinary Institute of New York (CINY) alumna and respected professional chef, ready for plating.

Like beauty queens getting their last touch up before the stage, Gaby and her teammates ensure the bowls of clam chowder are just-so, ladling the soup, wiping the plates clean, and arranging them for the judges. Team Captain Gaby, 30, helps to oversee the entire operation along with Dr. Frank Costantino, dean of the School of Hospitality Management and Culinary Institute of New York and head coach of CINY’s culinary competition team. 

The other two women on the team, Melina Sosa and Cheyenne Hamilton, both CINY students, are equally important parts of this culinary equation. This is the biggest moment yet of their culinary careers, as they compete on an international stage, representing the United States. There faced 15 other teams from around the world.

Cheyenne, a Marlton, New Jersey native who has always wanted to work with her hands, starts the dish. She strongly considered becoming an auto-mechanic before CINY — not shocking when you see how technical her knife skills are. She understands the importance of her role: as the prep chef, how she performs sets the foundation for the dish. Cheyenne deftly cuts, chops, and dices the celery, carrots, onion, and other aromatics uniformly, ensuring even cooking time and maximum flavor.

Between prepping and plating, Melina oversees the range. She is soft-spoken, but her cooking style is anything but. Hailing from the Food and Finance High School in Manhattan, Melina is a former America’s Best High School Chef and has already competed in national competitions for CINY. She brings together the ingredients prepped by Cheyenne, gently sweating the onions in their bacon fat bath. They sizzle in, releasing their color and becoming translucent. The other vegetables soon join in, as Melina’s intuition and years of experience guide her spoon, carefully turning over the carrots and celery at just the right time.

Then comes the roux. A carefully measured amount of flour is sprinkled into the pot, enrobing the vegetables. The flour taste is cooked down slowly and everything begins to turn golden. Cream, clam juice, and chicken stock soon follow, whisking the base of the soup into smooth and decadent goodness. A pour of puréed potatoes gets the clam chowder to the correct, velvety consistency. The clams, the star of the show, are last to join the party, as Melina folds them carefully into the chowder.

Plating must happen at just the right moment. Begin too soon, and the food could get cold and the crackers that garnish the chowder turn soft. Begin too late, and there may not be enough time to complete garnishes. As they complete their tasks, Gaby, Cheyenne, and Melina turn their attention to the plating task at-hand.

It’s a heart stopping moment as the chefs place the soups in front of the judges. They're aware of how their walk, eye contact, and delivery of the plates can convey confidence...or otherwise. After more than four hours of cooking, it isn’t easy projecting confidence as fatigue sets in. 

This was the dish that solidified their Bronze win, a warm and sumptuous cup of New England Clam Chowder. 

The clam chowder received top marks for a modern interpretation of a classic dish, earning the highest score for any dish throughout the entire competition. The program’s reputation as a top institution for culinary competition continues, with Melina, Cheyenne, and Gaby’s recent honors adding to the nearly 1,200 medals earned in competition by CINY students. 

Over four days, Melina, Cheyenne and Gaby worked together as a team to produce more than 32 dishes, from cuisines that largely hailed from Asian countries. They were judged on their Tom Yum Goong (Central Thai-style lemongrass soup with prawns), Pho Bo (Vietnamese Beef Noodle soup), Lamb pies (Australian savory meat pie) and other dishes from around the world.  

Chefs were judged on their mise en place, food waste, professional preparation, hygiene and safe food handling, service, presentation, texture and taste. On all four days of competition, chefs were challenged to create two versions of four different dishes – one authentic to the country of origin, and the other, a modern interpretation.

In their early days at CINY, Melina and Cheyenne recall Dean Frank Costantino telling tales of the student chefs that came before them that went on to bigger and better things after graduation. Students come to know these larger than life chefs like fables, learning from their successes and failures as they develop their own craft. 

Gaby was one such graduate from CINY.

“Gaby Grande is like a legend at Monroe,” Cheyenne said. “I knew her name within my first week.”

Frank called upon Gaby to lead the team because he knew “she could deliver.” The competition requires a working professional chef over 30, and Gaby had been battle-tested many times when she was still a student at CINY. 

Melina had been a standout from the beginning, and was early on Frank’s radar with her Junior Chef title. She demonstrated her expertise at the competition tryouts and was selected for a spot on the international team.

Cheyenne was a different story. Frank had been holding workshops in the lead up to the tryouts for the competition team. Every time, Cheyenne came to the sessions, practicing, listening and learning.

Except on tryout day, she was nowhere to be found.

“She thought she wasn’t good enough,” Frank said. “I told her, ‘I see something in you that maybe you don't see in yourself, but I want to see this to fruition. Even if this competition is a one-and-done, that’s okay....”

She agreed to come to the next training camp and quickly gained the confidence she needed to join the team. With the competition team set, Melina, Cheyenne, and Gaby would represent Team USA at the Thailand World Junior Chef Battle.

Their practice schedule was intense. For nine weeks, the women trained in the The Dining Lab, a working fine dining restaurant where Hospitality Management and Culinary Arts students engage in hands-on learning. The space was set to mimic the competition kitchen in Bangkok. Every day of practice, they would get a new dish from the competition to recreate.

“This was the first time we had cooked cuisines like that. There were so many new spices and different cooking techniques we had to learn,” Melina said. “It was really a great learning experience in that way.”

The team’s hard work in training paid off. After four intense days of competition, the team landed a fourth-place spot.

“We feel like, ‘Wow, we really did that.’ We’re still so proud,” Melina said. “Even today, that's how we feel. So I think that's where our teamwork and all that hard work we put in paid off.”

Dean Costantino said he was incredibly proud of the team for their performance and hard work.

“You know, we have recognition as a national powerhouse competition program. But the opportunity to represent the United States as Team USA and international competition is so unbelievable, it's just an amazing outcome,” he said.

Well done, everyone!