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\n Limerick chef Charlie Ward <\/p>\n
\n Limerick chef Charlie Ward <\/p>\n
\n A young Limerick chef is preparing to take on the world’s best young culinary talents after securing his spot on Team WorldSkills Ireland.\n <\/p>\n
Rising culinary star Charlie Ward, a native of Rathkeale, will travel to Shanghai, China, next month as part of a 17-strong national team competing in the 48th WorldSkills Competition.<\/p>\n
Selected from top vocational talents across the country, Charlie is stepping up in the culinary arts category and\u00a0will join a team of top young professionals competing across various trades.<\/p>\n
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The TUS Limerick Culinary Arts graduate earned his spot following an intense multi-stage selection process, which included competing against top culinary talent in Belfast as well as internal college trials.<\/p>\n
The culinary field features competitors from 48 different countries testing various classic and modern techniques. Modules include blind taste tests and specialised augmented reality challenges to assess the senses.<\/p>\n
Charlie explains what the unique perception tests will involve: “One module that I’m really excited for is the culinary perception test. We have a blind taste test, a blind smell test, and one that’s really funny is that we use augmented reality goggles and have to find out what the food is, which I think is so different. Your palate is everything as a chef.”<\/p>\n
The Rathkeale native earned his place on Team WorldSkills Ireland following a gruelling selection process. Over four days of high-stakes competition in Shanghai, Charlie will demonstrate his abilities in fine dining, casual bistro cooking, and foundational knife skills and butchery.<\/p>\n
The Limerick chef credits an animated film with sparking his understanding of culinary flavour combinations. A key scene in the movie Ratatouille opened his eyes to how simple ingredients work together. The revelation inspired him to experiment with food pairing and discover new taste profiles.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Live 95 news, Ward explains how the movie shaped his early approach to flavour: “The movie Ratatouille, and I always go back to it. It’s such an inspiration for me because it was the first time I realised that if you eat something on its own, it tastes good. But if you eat it combined with something that complements it well, it changes it completely. Because there’s a scene where he eats, I think, a strawberry on its own, and then he eats a piece of cheese, and then he eats them together. And it’s just like, it was fireworks.”<\/p>\n
The former Woodlands Hotel trainee says that moment sparked a lifelong curiosity for testing new ingredients and flavour combinations. “I was just always curious about it”, Charlie said.<\/p>\n
Charlie points to his transition year placement at the Woodlands Hotel in Adare as a defining moment in solidifying his career choice. Since then, he has dedicated long hours in professional kitchens, starting full-time summer work at age 15.<\/p>\n
Despite the scale of the event, located in a venue large enough to fit roughly 80 Croke Parks and expected to draw over 300,000 daily spectators, Charlie views representing both Limerick and Ireland as a privilege rather than a burden.<\/p>\n
“I think of it more so as a privilege rather than a burden in terms of responsibility,” he said. “I’m very privileged, and I couldn’t have done it without my family and my friends and my girlfriend and everyone that supports me.”<\/p>\n
Despite the scale of the international stage, the TUS Limerick graduate says representing his hometown and country is a proud milestone in his career.<\/p>\n
The WorldSkills Competition officially kicks off in Shanghai on September 21st.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Limerick chef Charlie Ward A young Limerick chef is preparing to take on the world’s best young culinary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,608,611,607,610,609,612,43],"class_list":["post-595207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-limerick-radio","tag-limerick-today","tag-limericks-live95fm","tag-live-95","tag-live95fm","tag-live95fm-homepage","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}