Garrett Brower wins SPYCA Competition 2024-25 USA Final

Garrett Brower has been named as the winner of the S.Pellegrino Young Chef Academy Competition 2024-24 USA Regional Final at an event in New York.

Brower wowed the Local Jury of chefs Valerie Chang, Curtis Duffy, Aisha Ibrahim, Ayesha Nurdjaja, and Junghyun Park with his signature dish of quail stuffed with Chesapeake oysters, a dish with a strong sense of sustainability.

“By celebrating the products and cuisine of the Chesapeake Bay I hope to generate interest in its preservation.  Oysters in particular are an iconic Chesapeake Bay species that have been decimated, like many other native populations, by habitat loss, poor water quality, and harvest pressure. The modern Chesapeake pantry must reflect current sustainable harvests and farmed oysters exemplify this expectation,” said Brower of the dish.

He will now go on to compete at the competition Grand Finale in Milan in 2025, where he and 14 other young hopefuls will cook again for the chance to be crowned the best young chef in the world.

Interestingly, on the night, it was another young chef who picked up the S.Pellegrino Social Responsibility Award, a collateral prize of the competition given to the chef whose dish best exemplifies sustainable practices. It was won by Adrien Calmels for his dish, Summer in Oregon, with the young chef also picking up the Acqua Panna Connection in Gastronomy Award, another collateral prize, voted for by the competition mentors, on what was a hugely successful night for him. The Acqua Panna Connection in Gastronomy Award is given for a dish that represents the culinary heritage of the region the chef is representing, highlighting both traditional culinary practices and the chef’s modern vision, and providing a connection between the past and the future. Calmels describes the dish as a “snapshot of Oregon’s spirit.”

The final collateral prize, the Fine Dining Lovers Food for Thought Award, which is voted for by the Fine Dining Lovers community and the only collateral prize to be chosen by the public, was won by Nicolas Lopez for his dish, Pork with hints of the sea, a dish he says speaks to his “years of experience” in the industry,” from a local pub all the way up to fine dining.

After the awards, guests were treated to a special dinner celebrating 125 years of S.Pellegrino, cooked by former competitors Daniel Garwood and Michael Park, and one-time Local Juror and mentor, Nino Compton.

Ahead of the award ceremony in New York City, participants, mentors, and other audience members had the privilege of hearing five of the most impactful chefs in the modern American restaurant scene share their thoughts on nurturing the next generation of chefs and reflect on their own process of creative maturation en route to becoming chefs.

Entitled The Forum, this panel discussion is becoming a traditional feature at SPYCA Competition events. As at the most recent New York City event in 2022, journalist and podcaster Andrew Friedman moderated, with the Local Jury forming the panel.

The conversation was framed by the trailer for and clips from the S.Pellegrino documentary Afuera Hay Más—A Young Chef’s Journey. The clips presented moments from the documentary that touched on identity, work environments, and teamwork and sparked heartfelt conversation, observations, and advice from the panelists.

On the topic of identity, Ayesha Nurdjaja described the confluence of basic skills and creative nimbleness that is required for a chef to reach full flight: “The technique has to come first,” she said. “After that I’m always learning about Middle Eastern cuisine, and [the food] is the alchemy of my own magic.”

Valerie Chang echoed this sentiment, describing how her cuisine reflects not just her Peruvian heritage but also how it was adapted to her US upbringing. In her early 30s, and a chef-owner for several years now, Chang revealed she feels that she only really locked into her identity on the plate this past year.