Keiss claims Scottish Student Chef of the Year

Nahui Keiss from Forth Valley College has been announced as the winner of Knorr Professional’s 2025 Scottish Student Chef of the Year competition. She won the coveted prize of an all-expenses paid educational food trip to Italy, along with her assistant Anastasiia Severina and their college lecturer.

Keiss impressed the judges with her main dish of monkfish tail, smoked pork rind, Parmentier potato, vegetable noodles, fennel broad bean purée, 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.

In addition to the overall competition, Eathan Buchanan, 21, from Ayrshire College was celebrated as the winning assistant chef. He achieved this by completing two skills tests – vegetable cuts and filleting fish.

'Poured passion into their dishes'
Competition ambassador and judge Gary Maclean said: “The standard of cooking in this year’s competition truly blew me away. 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."

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