National Chef of the Year 2025
In our 9th year of capturing the legendary annual Craft Guild of Chefs National Chef of the Year event in October.
Mentor Day was spent at Waitrose Headquarters in September taking individual portraits of all the finalists of NCOTY and YNCOTY, group portraits and the Judges portraits.
The NCOTY & YNCOTY finals took place at the University of West London on the 8th of October. Here we worked with our expert crew of two, Adrian and Ben. Two separate kitchens were used for the finalists who competed at staggered times. Ben captured all the kitchen action of food preparation, cooking and interaction with the judges. Adrian had a studio set-up where he photographed all the finalist’s dishes; starters, mains and desserts.
Images were turned around quickly as there was a deadline due to the winners being announced the same evening and images were going to be needed by Digital Blonde for a press release the following day.
The winners were announced at the Hippodrome, Leicester Square.
NCOTY winner: Orry Shand, Entier Services
YNCOTY winner: Jonny Smith, Gravetye Manor
All images were uploaded to galleries by the following morning to be seeded on the Craft Guild of Chefs’ social media platforms.
View previous years’ galleries
