CINY Student Anya Atkins Represents Team USA at International Culinary Competition in India, Wins ‘Spirit Award’

Earlier this month, Culinary Institute of New York (CINY) student Anya Atkins made her international competition debut, representing the United States in the Young Chef Olympiad competition, which was held in five cities across India. 

The Young Chef Olympiad is a global competition that welcomes young, talented culinarians from colleges across 60 countries to participate in a series of challenges to expand their learning and broaden their horizons to new cuisines. In addition to the competition events, the chefs also participate in networking events with one another, inviting them to make connections across national and cultural borders while trying regional cuisines around India.  

After nine days of rigorous competition, networking, and travel, Anya brought home the Spirit Award, which is granted to the young chef with the most potential and a perfect kitchen score, indicating top marks for technique, cleanliness, organization and adherence to safety standards. (Congratulations, Anya!)

She also placed second after home country India in the “mystery basket” Street Food round, where chefs receive random ingredients of which they have no prior knowledge and are tested on their ability to come up with “street food”, or food that would normally be consumed while out shopping, like pizza or bao.  

Anya and her coach CINY Dean Frank Costantino, navigated tough challenges across the competition. Among her competition dishes, Anya prepared an egg dish with poached eggs, omelet, and scrambled eggs; a vegetarian course of curry with lentil fritter, eggplant, fried leeks, fried chickpeas, spiced yogurt, and coconut vinaigrette; poached fish with forced meat, prawns, a saffron porridge, snow peas, and tornado zucchini and for dessert, a pâte à choux filled with mango cream and diced mango with mint.  

“It was a great experience. Everyone that I met there was great – some of the nicest people that I've ever met. For me, it was a really cool experience for my first time being out of the country,” Anya said. “This competition was really a test of how you reacted to the environment you were put in, as opposed to what you were actually making – I feel like I learned a lot about myself as a chef and I’m proud of what we were able to accomplish.”  

Those unexpected challenges tested Anya, and she had to think on her feet. The ovens she expected to bake her pâte à choux were much smaller than what she was used to at home, and only had their temperatures measured in Celsius. Some of the traditional stabilizers for her pâte à choux pastry cream were not what she expected, also causing issues with that dessert.  

Dean Costantino said he selected Anya for the competition because she has been on Monroe’s culinary team for over a year and is “incredibly talented.”  

“We needed a student who could handle not only culinary but pastry as well, and she is talented in both areas,” he said. “I told her, ‘Be yourself, cook from the heart like you always do, and remember above all else, you belong on this stage!  Work clean and deliver the program just like you practiced it and have fun!’ And that’s exactly what she did.”  

Anya said her CINY training, along with the various competitions she has participated in with the competition team, helped prepare her for the Young Chef Olympiad – the biggest trial for her to date.  

“CINY and everything that I’ve learned there so far really helped prepare me for this competition in so many ways,” she said. 

“It’s not just the technical skills, but also being adaptable under pressure. If there’s one thing that is true about every competition I’ve been in, it’s that things won’t always go as planned. But because of my training at Monroe, I knew how to adjust and keep going.”