Cook Your Heart Out

At the San Pellegrino Young Chef Academy competition in Milan, Italy, last October, Singaporean chef Ian Goh competed against 14 culinary minds and took his well-deserved spot in the Top 3 with his Heritage Lamb dish inspired by his Hainanese roots

- Dudi Aureus

It was a breezy October morningthe second day of the San Pellegrino Young Chef Academy competition in Milan, Italy. But inside the East End Studios, an events space that had been transformed into a massive culinary arena comprising eight pop-up kitchens, the air was thick and the tension palpable. Here, the second batch of young chefs (from a total of 15 who competed over two days) cooked their hearts out in the hopes of taking home the prestigious title-winner of the San Pellegrino Young Chef Academy 2022-2023.

Occupying kitchen number four was 29-year-old Singaporean chef Ian Goh, who looked calm and collected as he prepared his Hainanese-inspired Heritage Lamb, a four-part dish utilising different cuts of the animal, in five hours. The only visible sign of nerves were the beads of sweat dotting his face. For the recently appointed head chef of the progressive Restaurant Inicio, this was the culmination of his one-year journey as a contestant which started when he won the Asian regional finals of the culinary competition in 2022. This earned him an automatic induction into the San Pellegrino Young Chef Academy, which, the brand's international business unit director Stefano Bolognese shared, is a global community that nurtures young chefs aged 18 to 30 through mentorships, networking opportunities, as well as a biennial prestigious global cooking competition.