Junior Seafood Chef Competition 2025
November 25, 2025
On Friday 14th November, the Made Great In Grimsby Schools Ambassador, Joanne Woodhouse, and Carrie Vaughan, from the UK Seafood School at Grimsby Institute, held the first Junior Seafood Chef competition and what a day it was!
Building on the success of the National Seafood Chef competition which is open to young people studying hospitality and catering related courses at colleges across the country, this new format brings together teams of young people from secondary school, predominantly year 10 (age 14-15 years) who competed against each other for the prize of Junior Seafood Chef 2025.
24 young people, in 8 teams, from 6 schools in Lincolnshire came together to design, prepare, cook and present two courses along the theme “A Celebration of Grimsby Seafood”. The time, energy and efforts that had gone into preparation were phenomenal – a number of schools held heats for the competition during lesson time and even after school to decide who was the winning team to represent their academy.
The competition was sponsored by Fastnet Fish Ltd and we were delighted to welcome Claire White, Head of Strategy, Operations and Transformation and Lauren Flett, Project Manager, alongside Gareth Bartrum, owner of the Auction House restaurant and previously held Michelin Star as judges for the competition – they most definitely had the hardest task of all.
Lauren Flett said, “we were honoured to support the Junior Seafood Chef of the Year competition. Having the opportunity to judge and sample such incredible seafood dishes was a real privilege the level of talent on display was outstanding. Events like this are vital for inspiring the next generation to enjoy, prepare, and understand the fantastic range of seafood available. Jo and Carrie do exceptional work, and we’re proud to have the Fastnet brand associated with such a positive and impactful initiative.”
As part of the competition students also created a tablescape to present their dishes on and we saw a handmade model of the Alfred Enderby smokehouse, a range of fishing memorabilia kindly shared by the Grimsby Fishing Heritage Centre and a look back in time at some photographs.
Students, teachers, parents and employers shared in the success of the day and joined the awards ceremony when the following results were shared:-
1st place – Cambridge Park Academy with their cheesy smoked haddock pots and traditional fish pie
2nd place – Louth Academy who made a pan-fried Sea Bass with a herb crusts and roasted root vegetable puree followed by Grimsby smoked haddock kedgeree
3rd place – Healing Academy smoked haddock and leek fishcakes with a lemon dill mayo followed by Fisherman’s pie with Grimsby cod, smoked haddock and prawns
The seafood was provided by Premier Seafoods. Nathan Godley, owner of Premier Seafoods was there to share in the celebrations – he said, “without doubt the biggest single factor as a nation holding us back from eating more fish is not knowing how to cook it. As a fishmonger it was an absolute joy to see what the young students had cooked. There was even a whole bass prepared on the bone. I regularly see grown adults convulse and pull faces at the very idea of attempting such a dish. Hats off to the students. They’ve clearly a lifetime of eating healthy fish and seafood ahead of them from what I saw.”
A huge well done and thank you to all who made the day possible, it was an incredible example of team work, celebration of seafood and creativity from some amazing young people.
Bring on Junior Seafood Chef 2026!