Friday 20 April 2007

The verdict is in and Tuesday afternoon saw Tony Ferris from Fratelli Pizza in North Buderim become this year’s victor in the Gourmet Category of the Queensland State Final of The Dairy Farmers Best of the Best Pizza Challenge.

In this, the tenth anniversary year of the Dairy Farmers Best of the Best Pizza Challenge, the competition format has expanded to include two different categories. On the first day five competitors cook off to find the best traditional pizza maker and on the second a different group compete to find the best gourmet pizza maker in the state.

Tony, a veteran of competition, won the close fought challenge that saw 3 different individuals take individual awards for “Best of” each sub-categories. They were: •

   Best Smallgoods Pizza – Tony Ferris – Fratelli Pizza, North Buderim

• Best Specialty Pizza – Chris Symons – Vitto Pizza, Mudjimba

• Best Cheese Pizza – Bryant Wells – Ambrosia at Albany, Albany Creek

Tony will now compete in the National Finals to be held in Sydney in September at Fine Food Australia to see if he can become the overall Australian winner.

The other competitors who made it through the cook-offs to take part in the state final were:

• Oliver Boltjes – Ma Mensa, Noosa

• Shane Tice – Castelli’s, Rosalie

The pizzas were all judged by a panel of three professional cooks on a range of elements including originality, creativity, menu balance, use of ingredients and total appeal. In addition to Dairy Farmers, the following are major sponsors of the competition:

Natural Gas, K R Castlemaine, Watson’s Catering Equipment and Spyral Food Equipment.