Culinary Students Receive Warm Welcome in Westman Islands

This year's winners at CECBI, Marta Oti from Spain, Alessandro Abbrescia from Italy, and Marco Sobral from Portugal, were awarded a trip to Iceland.

The culinary school competition Concurso Escuelas de Cocina de Bacalao de Islandia (CECBI) is designed to introduce Icelandic salted fish to culinary students in Spain, Italy, and Portugal. The project is part of the marketing efforts of Business Iceland's Seafood from Iceland project. According to Björgvin Þ. Björgvinsson, the head of the fisheries and food sector at Business Iceland, has been developing the project since 2015. Today, it is well-known among students and chefs in these countries, which are the largest consumers of salted fish.

A crucial part of CECBI is a competition where each country's best salted fish chef is selected. This year's winners, Marta Oti from Spain, Alessandro Abbrescia from Italy, and Marco Sobral from Portugal, were awarded a trip to Iceland to learn about the origin of this high-quality product. They also had the opportunity to share knowledge and represent their countries.

The CECBI chefs were part of the program at the Matey Seafood Festival in the Westman Islands this year. They attended the event's opening events, met guest chefs, tasted dishes from their menus, visited the VSV salted fish processing pland, and went aboard a fishing vessel, experiencing the best the Westman Islands offer. The trip's highlight was a lunch in Herjólfsbær in Herjólfsdalur, where the culinary students recreated their winning dishes for select guests. They were assisted by Gísli Matthías Auðunsson, a master chef at Slippurinn and other renowned establishments.

View photos from the event here below