50 Best BBVA Scholarship program receives the 2018 Excellence Gourmet Award
The 50 Best Scholarship program, in collaboration with BBVA, was presented the 2018 Gourmet Excellence Award as part of the Madrid International Tourism Fair (FITUR). These awards seek to foster the highest quality in different sectors related to tourism and culture - in this case with gastronomy.
The Excelencias Group presented their awards, which annually recognize innovation and efforts by individuals and institutions to advance excellence in tourism and culture. This year, the 50 Best BBVA Scholarship program won the Excelencias Gourmet Award for creating opportunities for aspiring young chefs around the world.
William Drew, Group Editor of 50 Best, said: “50 Best celebrates the very best in gastronomy and we aim to use the profile of our own list and awards – and the chefs involved – to discover and nurture future talent. That’s why we introduced this scholarship in partnership with BBVA for the first time in 2018. We are delighted that this has been recognized in this regard in the hope that more aspiring chefs are inspired to reach for the heights of the gastronomic sector in 2019 and beyond.”
Óscar Moya, Global Head of Branded Content and Sponsorship at BBVA expressed his gratitude for the recognition, adding that: “Awards like this one encourage us to continue creating opportunities for people striving to make their dreams come true through hard work and excellence.”
50 Best BBVA Scholarship, an excellent taste
The World’s 50 Best Restaurants and BBVA began collaborating to create an internship that would award talented culinary students and inexperienced chefs, so that they could continue their training, learning from the best chefs in the world. In the first year of the program more than 1,000 people applied from around the world. It was Jessie Liu of Taiwan who ultimately was awarded the scholarship. The young chef learned from chefs Andoni Luis Aduriz from Mugaritz (San Sebastian) and Dominique Crenn from Atelier Crenn (San Francisco). The internship allowed her to continue her training and enhance her culinary skills by working with the best culinary professionals in the world.
Excelencias Gourmet Awards 2018 - BBVA
For the second edition, which recently closed its application submission process, the winner will be invited to complete the internship in three different restaurants: Odette (Singapore), Core by Clare Smyth (London) and Quintonil (Mexico City). In 2019, for the first time ever, the students taking second and third place in the selection process will also be offered the opportunity to be introduced to a restaurant in their region.
Tourism quality and gourmet excellence awards
The yearly Excelencias Awards were established in 2005 by Grupo Excelencias, which specializes in products and services from different areas of communications linked to tourism and culture. The purpose of these awards is to promote maximum quality across different spheres of activity, all of them related to tourism and culture.
The awards are divided into two categories: The Excelencias Turisticas Awards and Excelencias Gourmet Awards. This year, some of the winners in the first category were Grupo Iberostar and Grupo Cubacán Hoteles. In the second category, the winners were 50 Best BBVA Scholarship, together with Grupo Ilunion, Fundación Osborne and chefs like Cristián Escribá and Eneko Atxa, among others. The Excelencias Awards ceremony has been a part of the Madrid International Tourism Fair since 2010.