LAU has won the first place on The Best University Team of The Year Competition

The students of Gastronomy Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management Academy of European University of Lefke (LAU) have won the first place in “14th International Cookery Festival Days” that has been established at Istanbul. At the “The best University Team of The Year Competition”, LAU students won against 23 other universities with the victorious work of their students. 3 LAU students, which are Gökhan Deniz, Doğa Çetin and Beyza Yağmur, have been considered worthy for golden medal. In this festival, which has intensive participation from different countries, Celal Fırat Özdemir, Emre Varol, Nadir Kalaycı, Kubilay Şimşek, Şükran Kaya and Furkan Batuhan Bozkurt also have won 3 gold, 2 silver and 1 bronze medal at “fish”, “dessert” and “meat” branches.

Head of the Gastronomy Department Assist. Prof. Dr. Aytaç Yıldırım has point out that Gastronomy Department participates in International Golden Cap and International Istanbul Gastronomy Days since 2013 and the students that achieves success every year represents TRNC and LAU in the best way. Mr. Yıldırım also emphasized that LAU has an important mission as the first university from TRNC that got those achievements and lead a way by winning this year’s “The Best University Team of The Year Competition” at Gastronomy Days. Yıldırım has expressed that with the adventage of Gastronomy Department’s English education, they aim to represent LAU and TRNC with a success at the competitions in Europe that will held next years.

Department Academician Zihni Türksel mentioned that as Tourism and Hospitality Management Academy, they participated to Cookery Days Festival 3rd time and crown their achievements by winning 6 gold, 2 silver and 1 bronze medal in four different categories. Mr. Türksel mentioned that their first place that they won at “The Best University Team Competition”, which is an important and prestigious competition, is because of their students’ outstranding performance that they show in the competition. Mr. Türksel also mentioned that this achievement is a result of their tight and selfless works and as their practice theacher, he is proud of the achievements of the students and as Gastronomy Department, he is aiming to open up to Europe with his students.

Opinions of some students who participated in the events;

Celal Fırat Özdemirli: “I participated in fish category of ‘Istanbul Gastronomy Festival’. My dish was a perch marinated with a creamy sauce and barley, rice noodles with various fresh vegetables and parmesan. In my presentations, I mostly prefered to use local products and present it by enriching them. Me and the other participant friends of mine tried to represent our school in best way possible in the festival and we succeed. I’m gifting my achievement to our valuable teachers that have labours on us and to our school for their unsparing support.”

Doğa Çetin: “ As LAU team, we were assertive in this competition which has many other universities to competing with. Even it was a hard competition, our practice teacher has supported so much in our works. As a result of our compatible teamwork, we were able to use our time efficient and considered worthy for first place.”

Emre Varol: “It was my second competition that I represented my university. It was a contentious competition. I participated in the competition with a roasted fish from ottoman cook. We’re getting more experience from many menu practices that we do in practice kitchen of LAU and these experiences are getting us achievements.”

Kubilay Şimşek: “Meeting with many famous chefs from Turkey and abroad was a big experience for us. We had opportunities to see multiple international dish presentations in this five days long competition. The support from our practice teacher Zihni Türksel was really important for us.”

Furkan Batuhan Bozkurt: “ I represented my university in category of interuniversity dessert category. In the process of the competition famous chefs passed their experiences to us. The workshops that was made by Turkish national team has implemented asignificant contrubition to us.”