Castlerea chef leading Irish team in Culinary Olympics

Castlerea’s Alan Fitzmaurice who is head chef at The Glasshouse Hotel in Sligo is leading the Irish team that will be taking part in the Culinary Olympics in Stuttgart in February.

Alan, brother of local councillor Paschal Fitzmaurice is President of the Panel of Chefs of Ireland, and Senior Team Captain for the Culinary Olympics.

He is also a multi-award winning chef and a member of the senior team who won a silver medal at the Culinary Olympics in 2008 – the best ever performance by an Irish team.

Every four years the elite of the cheffing world gather to compete in the Culinary Olympics and two Irish teams (Senior and Junior) have qualified for this ultimate culinary challenge in February 2024.

Based on pre-Covid figures over 100,000 people from the hospitality industry around the globe will attend. In no other cooking competition do so many professional chefs measure their skills against each other – 1,800 participants from 67 nations judged by a team of 60.

Speaking about the event Alan said: “Having two teams at the Culinary Olympics is a significant achievement for Ireland. We have some really talented chefs involved and the training regime is in full flow – this consists of fortnightly training sessions which will become weekly as we get closer to February.

“I have really high hopes for both senior and junior teams though the competition will be exceptionally high – it really is the best in the world competing for the titles”.