Chef Nahui Keiss, from Forth Valley College, has been named as the winner of Knorr Professional’s Scottish Student Chef of the Year Competition 2025.
Nahui, 38, impressed the competition’s judges with her main dish of monkfish tail, smoked pork rind, Parmentier potato, vegetable noodles, fennel broad bean puree, lumpfish caviar and champagne sauce.
She followed this with a passion fruit and mango entremet dessert, with mango passion fruit gel and black pepper tuille.
These outstanding dishes landed Nahui, her assistant Anastasiia Severina and their college lecturer the prize of an all-expenses paid educational food trip to Italy.
Nahui was up against four other finalists from Scotland’s top catering colleges, in a live final that took place at City of Glasgow College on Wednesday 26th March.
The students competed in teams of two – each consisting of a head chef and an assistant – completing a skills test and delivering a two-course meal, based on this year’s competition theme of wellbeing and the connection between nutrition and health.
In addition to the overall competition winner, Eathan Buchanan, 21, from Ayrshire College was celebrated as winning assistant chef, completing two skills tests – vegetable cuts and filleting fish.
Competition ambassador and judge Glasgow born chef Gary Maclean said: “The standard of cooking in this year’s competition truly blew me away.
“Our theme was ‘Feel Good Food,’ and what impressed me most was how the students not only embraced the concept but also poured their passion into their dishes.
“The most important thing for me was that they felt proud of what they presented, and you could see that in every plate. The creativity, skill, and heart they put into their cooking were beyond exceptional.”
Joining Gary on the judging panel was head judge James Brown, executive chef at Unilever Food Solutions, and Bidfood Scotland’s food development chef, Martin Ross.
Knorr Professional’s Scottish Student Chef of the Year competition is now in its second year of ‘discovering and celebrating’ the next generation of young Scottish chefs.
The other chefs in the 2025 final were:
- Runner up, Ross Gourlay, 20 – City of Glasgow;
- Graham Watson, 35 – Ayrshire;
- Louise Smith, 40 – Ayrshire;
- Lewis MacLeod, 26 – UHI, Argyll.
The assistant chefs in the competition were:
- Winner, Eathan Buchanan, 21 – Ayrshire;
- Evie Edgington, 19 – UHI, Argyll;
- Jamie Robb, 17 – City of Glasgow;
- Taylor Carrol, 18 – Ayrshire;
- Anastasiia Severina – Forth Valley.
