THINKING OUT OF THE MLA BLACK BOX

Top toques...Mandarin Oriental snagged the overall winner title
at the recent MLA Black Box Challenge

Young guns to watch...the all-black Taylors University came in as 1st Runner-up

Event host, Hilton Kuala Lumpur consoled themselves with the 2nd Runner-up title

The knives were out and pans were fired up as teams of young chefs from some of the city's most prominent hotels and culinary schools battled it out at the Meat Livestock Australia (MLA) Black Box Culinary Challenge recently.

Aimed at raising the bar of these youthful talents, participating teams were given one hour to create a three-course menu that best showcased the various ingredients contained in a black box. Then the different teams had to swing into action; to prepare the dishes for the judging panel.

Soup's up! The Best Soup of the event was boiled up by Mandarin Oriental

While Mandarin Oriental wowed the judges to land them the Best Soup award, Taylor's University's men in black conjured up the Best Appetiser. Newbie DoubleTree by Hilton KL flexed its culinary muscle to snap up the Best Main Course and Westin KL got their sweet taste of success by landing the Best Dessert award.

Here's an overview what the competing teams whipped up.

It was admirable how creative these youngsters were. Whether it's appetiser, soup, main course or dessert, they pulled out all the stops and even cooked for some 300 invitees who showed up for the gala dinner.

Some of the appetisers (above) and main courses (below) on display

Horsing around a Country & Western theme ... a table centrepiece by Seri Pacific KL

Each hotel also had to decorate two tables for the dinner - Renaissance KL's simplest but pragmatic set-up seemed to have struck the right chord as it was awarded the Best Table Display.