Twenty four year old Clancy Morrison led the two person team to victory at the first ever regional heat in Bega, NSW of the Nestle Golden Chef's Hat competition, now in its 50th year.

Clancy Morrison loves his work as a chef. (Picture: Bill Brown)

Mr Morrison grew up in the Bega Valley, studied at Bega TAFE and went to Sydney and Melbourne to complete his training and gain experience.

After working in award winning restaurants he defied expectations to stay in the city and instead brought his skills back home.

As a teenager he had very different ambitions.

"I wanted to play soccer professionally," he said, in the kitchen of a small village cafe while preparing a fine menu of Italian dishes.

The following night the cafe will fill with patrons from the village, surrounding farms, and rural sub-divisions to have a culinary experience taken for granted in the cities.

Although once focussed on sports he said that as he was approaching the last year of high school it was 'crunch time' and he had to decide what he really wanted to do.

"I went in and did a couple of weeks work experience in a kitchen and fell in love with it, and that was it," he said.

He trained at Bega TAFE and did an apprenticeship at a local winery restaurant and then went to a restaurant in Melbourne.

Then it was a big step to Sydney restaurant, Pilu, awarded best Italian restaurant in Australia.

"That was a really great experience for me," he said.

"From there I came back home. I didn't leave here because I didn't like home, I left to get some really good experience and become a really good chef."

He took a job as head chef at an Italian restaurant in a newly built waterfront complex overlooking the fishing port of Bermagui.

"And then a really good opportunity to be the sous chef at Zanzibar in Merimbula," he said.

"At 23, to be sous chef at a hatted restaurant, is huge," he said, referring to the sought after Chef's Hat Awards for Australia's top restaurants that, says Clancy, are 'a huge deal for everyone in the restaurant scene'.

Restaurants all over Australia are reviewed and the successful ones are rated as either one, two, or three hats.

The sous chef role was an enormous step up in a restaurant of that calibre as the position is second only to the head chef with responsibility for planning and directing food preparation.

This led to him working at the restaurant with apprentice Eli Wieber.

Mr Morrison said he had always wanted to enter the Golden Chef's Hat awards, a national competition that is open only to those under 25, however until this year there had been no heats in the region.

So when a Bega regional heat was announced Mr Morrison teamed up with Mr Wieber to enter the competition.

Having won the heat they are next off to Sydney for the NSW finals.

Mr Morrison says that the teams start with 100 points and then lose points depending on factors such as presentation, flavour, and matching of flavours.

"If you get two teams who put up really great dishes, then if you've got a wrinkle in your chef's jacket ... or a scuff on your boot ... they look to that to split the two teams."

Mr Morrison is realistic about the chances for success in the state finals.

"We are going to be cooking against young chefs that are going to be working in these one, two or three hat restaurants week in and week out, and it's a real grind, and you learn a lot in those environments," he said.

If they do win they go to the national finals for which the prize is a 'Food Safari' to South Africa, and national recognition for their abilities.

The Bega heat was held at Bega TAFE and the state heats will be held at Ryde TAFE.

"If you ever talk to chefs in Sydney from the 1960s, 70s, 80s, they trained at Ryde TAFE," said Mr Morrison.

"Early on in the piece a lot of European teachers were there and they were very strict. You know that anyone that was taught there, they're going to be good."

Mr Morrison stresses the value of the training he had at the local Bega TAFE.

"There are things you learn at TAFE that are so important. There are things that you learn on the job that you'll never learn at TAFE, and there are things that you'll learn at TAFE that you'll never learn on the job.

"The two go hand in hand. You need both. There's stuff I learned at TAFE that I'll use for my whole career. It's a really, really important part of your training."

Meanwhile Mr Morrison is very happy with his move back home.

"I've always loved Italian food and that's got to be seasonal," he said. "We use seasonal food that is as close to us as possible."

It seems only natural, he says, as he prepares ingredients in a cafe kitchen in the Australian village of Candelo, named after the Italian town of Candelo.

Source: ABC News, Bill Brown, June 29^th 2015