Year 9 Senior Girls Restaurant Design Competition

It’s not every day that an award-winning chef comes to school, especially not as a judge!  

We were so pleased to welcome back Chef Wesley Smalley from Seasonality to judge the Year 9 Restaurant Design competition; the result of three weeks of taster rotation of lessons in Food Tech, Design and Textiles. Groups of students presented innovative restaurant ideas as a concept to gain funding to Mrs. Irons, Mrs. McWilliam, Ms.Carty and Chef Wesley.

Using inspiration from Chef Wesley during their visit to his Maidenhead-based restaurant, and techniques taught during each of the subject rotations, each group presented their chosen restaurant concept, paying close attention to elements such as menu design, interior layout, overall theming and staff uniforms. Projects ranged from oceanfront beach cafes with a seafood slant, Southern Italian-styled eateries, disco-themed diners and a prison escape concept showing the girls’ creativity was in full force!

Congratulations to Maisie, Mayla and Gracie for winning with their “Illusion Kitchen” concept which centred around optical illusions, reflected in the different restaurant rooms, the experimental menu and the eye-catching staff uniforms. Chef Wesley thanked all the girls for their efforts and praised their “creativity and exploration of the theme” and surprised the winning team with an additional prize of lunch at his award-winning restaurant in Maidenhead. 
 

Special mention also goes to Ria, Chloe, Dulcie, and Izzy for their fun-filled “Disco Diner” theme and Olivia, Emily and Ellena for the “Moonpool Mayhem'' concept inspired by the Australian mermaid teen show “H2O: Just Add Water”.

Food Teacher, Mrs. Irons, organised the event in collaboration with Chef Wesley and the DT and Textiles teams and said, “I was delighted with the girls’ efforts on this project, everyone showed such enthusiasm and inventiveness.  I hope this gave them a great taste of the GCSE subjects they could choose as their future choices.”