IFTM alumna Renee Ng was awarded two honours in team effort at the first Macau Chocolate Showpiece and Praline Competition organised by the Macau Chocolate Association, which was concluded on 3 March 2023 at the Louvre Café, Studio City Macau.
Themed “The Origin of Cocoa,” the competition required contestants to assemble their edible artworks – chocolate showpieces and Praline display –within the timeframe of three hours. The jury tasted and graded the artworks in the afternoon on the same day before deciding that IFTM graduate Renee and her teammate Miffy Pun working at the Wynn Palace resort, were named the first prize and the Best Praline Award. Being judged professionally on stringent criteria set by the jurors, the duo was found to have performed most satisfactorily in terms of skills, taste, difficulty and creativity combined.
Renee Ng graduated from IFTM’s Bachelor of Arts in Culinary Arts Management Programme. Founded in September 2011, the four-year programme has since proved its attractiveness by becoming one of the most popular programmes offered by IFTM, enticing both local and external students. Most students have very likely been absorbed by the programme’s strong faculty and ample opportunities for experiments and practices. Each yearly intake of students has been tightly restricted to a relatively small number – although recently a slightly expanded intake has been introduced –to ensure a small class-size environment where each student would have sufficient time to test their imaginations and creativities, eventually apply their knowledge to practice through internship and participate in academic exchanges worldwide.
In the meantime, with small classrooms size, academics and industry-professional lecturers would be able to provide tailor-made guidance, commentaries, and suggestions on students’ curations and masterplans, most of the time with the resources to draw attention to the most minute details. One of the crucial bright points of the programme is its faculty. Reliant on a base of lecturers and professionals who have served “hot kitchens” of star-studded hotels and restaurants within and beyond the Greater China Region, the programme draws on this vast knowledge base to deliver a well-rounded broad-based foundation from which the students can flourish.
Despite the programme focusing on culinary arts, it highlights so much more than that, for students are educated about languages; financial planning; management theory; human resources and organisational behaviour; environmental considerations and sustainability issues; legislation; marketing, and entrepreneurship. All these complement the entire culinary learning journey at IFTM.
