April Lily Partridge wins the Roux Scholarship

The last female chef to win the yearly competition was Mercy Fenton in 1994 - the year the 29-year-old was born. 

It was the first time Lily Partridge - whose CV also includes stints at The Clove Club and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in the US - had entered the competition and this was her final opportunity to do so before passing the competition’s age limit.

For this year’s final, the six chefs were asked to prepare their own dish using a variety of ingredients, along the theme of Pâté Chaud de Lotte (hot monkfish pie) – a recipe originally created by the Troisgros family.

At the start of the competition, the chefs were shown a table displaying dozens of ingredients that would allow them to interpret the brief as they chose. The only ingredients they were obliged to use were the monkfish and whole black truffle.

“It was really tough, a tough brief. Monkfish is tricky, it’s very easy to overcook. Once I got in to the kitchen I began to question my reasoning and interpretation of what was required in the brief,” she says. 

“I began to change what I had planned and for the first hour I was still working out what to do. I wasn’t 100% happy but we are all hard taskmasters on ourselves! As part of the prize I would like to visit St Peter, an Australian fish restaurant in Sydney. My whole career has been focused on meat, so that’d be really good.”

Lily Partridge was competing against five male chefs: Ben Champkin from The Newt in Somerset, Christopher Clarke from Core by Clare Smyth in London, Oliver Dovey from Baxterstorey in London, Sam Lomas from Glebe House in Devon, and Alex Rothnie from L’Enclume in Cumbria.

The judging panel was led by joint honorary presidents of judges, Michel Troisgros and his son César, whose restaurant at Troisgros in the Roannais region of south-east France has held three Michelin stars longer than any other restaurant in the world.

They led the panel alongside joint chairmen Alain and Michel Jr, who were joined by Brian Turner CBE, Angela Hartnett OBE, Rachel Humphrey, Sat Bains (1999 scholar), André Garrett (2002 Scholar), Simon Hulstone (2003 scholar).