Led by top Magyar chef Tamás Széll, the Hungarian team won the continental finals of the Bocuse d’Or culinary competition, held in Budapest this week. Triumphing over 19 other European teams, including Norway at second place and Sweden taking third prize, Széll and his team earned gold after presenting delightfully creative courses made of Hungarian game and local river fish, achieving the honor to advance to the event’s global finals in Lyon in January 2017. We congratulate Széll and his ensemble for this brilliant achievement, and wish them the best of luck in France next year!

We always knew that Magyar chef Tamás Széll – the leading culinary artist of Budapest’s Michelin-starred Onyx Restaurant – is an outstanding representative of Hungary’s fine-dining scene, but now it’s official: Széll ranks among the best foodsmiths in Europe! During the two-day continental finals of the prestigious Bocuse d’Or culinary competition held here in Budapest on May 10-11, 11 European contestants qualified to be in the global finals of the Bocuse d’Or, including representatives from Hungary, Norway, Sweden, France, Iceland, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Spain, and they will challenge the world’s best chefs from other continents on January 24-25, 2017 in Lyon, France. This final event is set to be one of the most remarkable contests in the history of Bocuse d’Or, as 2017 marks the 30th anniversary of this esteemed cooking competition.

90-year-old Frenchman Paul Bocuse is one of the world’s most famous chefs, and his dedication to using high-quality fresh ingredients has been very important throughout his career. He founded the international Bocuse d’Or cooking competition during a visit to Lyon in 1985. Today, the Bocuse d’Or is one of the world’s most prestigious culinary tournaments, taking place every two years near the end of January in Lyon, France, at the SIRHA International Hotel, Catering and Food Trade Exhibition. According to the rules of the competition, every contestant has to work with the same ingredients, while all of the meals have to be ready within the available time frame of 5 hours and 35 minutes. For this year’s European championships, two of the three mandatory ingredients were Hungarian: sterlet and young venison.

Yesterday’s success for the Hungarian team came after months of hard work and dedicated practice, and Széll managed to impress the jury – comprised of many of Europe’s most illustrious chefs – with creatively cooked culinary specialties, including charcoal-grilled venison with forest mushrooms and smoked Mangalica bacon, while the fish course was lightly salted sterlet and langoustine glazed with pickled wild garlic and brown butter; both recipes were kept secret until the very last moment in the competition. While cooking, the atmosphere was especially intense considering that the chefs had to work in small kitchen boxes under the glare of spotlights and the international press, as gastronomy fans cheered loudly in the stands amid a sports-arena atmosphere – below is our exclusive photo gallery of Széll preparing the Hungarian team’s winning dishes, taken for We Love Budapest by Budapest-based ace gastro photographer László Balkányi.

This high-profile opportunity for Budapest to host the Bocuse d’Or European finals, not to mention the triumph of the Hungarian team, is a remarkable demonstration of the outstanding quality of modern-day Hungarian gastronomy, and we look forward to following the Magyar team’s achievements when they run for the world's top title in 2017.