Judges at the Bermuda Culinary Arts Festival said watching Escoffier Cup winner Steve Marston cook was like watching a symphony orchestra.

?One of the judges said I was wonderful to watch and cooked like a symphony,? said a proud Mr. Marston on Monday morning, the day after the winners for the various Bermuda Culinary Arts Festival competitions were announced.

?I try to practice without rushing around. If you do something, do it methodically, that way you are less likely to make a mistake.?

He received a total of 37 points out of 40, the range for gold being 36 to 40.

Mr. Marston said he is no stranger to competition, and was eager to participate in the Escoffier Cup because of its high standards. He was particularly pleased that there was an international judge on the panel, Chef Fritz Sonnenschmidt, along with local judges Leo Betschart and Rudy Gieringer.

?In the past, there has been a chef of the year competition, and a master chef cook-off,? said Mr. Marston. ?In that, I came a very close second. When I put my final dish into the oven, the oven ran out of gas.?

The winners of the Escoffier Cup and other Culinary Arts Festival competitions were announced at a Gala dinner on Sunday evening. Mr. Marston was excited to meet actress Sigourney Weaver at the dinner.

?She wasn?t there to give me the cup, which surprised me,? he said. ?I asked if I could have a photograph with her. I grabbed her by the waist and didn?t let go.

?Then the photographers were having a frenzy. I have little sympathy for the paparazzi, it was like ?Steve over here, Steve other here!?.?

His prize includes a trophy and an Elle & Vire company sponsored trip to the world?s most prestigious cooking competition, the Bocuse D?Or in France.

At the age of 12 Mr. Marston started working in a hotel kitchen to get away from a different kind of pot ? the plant pot.

?My family was in horticulture,? he said. ?I started in the kitchen to get out from the horticultural side of things. One of the reasons was, it involved planting a thousand seedlings in a pot this big, and you spend all day putting them in pots, and then it only looked like you had done a small amount. It was more fascinating for me to be in the kitchen and to learn from that.?

He worked weekends and holidays at a hotel in Sidmouth, Devon, England, washing pots, then washing vegetables, then putting salads together.

He was originally born in Somerset, England, but moved around with his family. He attended the Cambourne Technical College in Cornwall, England where he obtained his cooking qualifications.

?It was a toss up of a job here or a sous chef at the Miami Intercontinental Hotel in Florida,? he said. ?Both jobs were lined up, and I said I would probably prefer Bermuda to Florida.?

During the final round of the Escoffier Cup, he made a complex dish of beef tenderloin and shrimp tempura with eleven different components including a Waldorf salad and vegetable mousses.

?I don?t cook like that so much at home,? he said, ?but I do a lot of demonstrations at International Imports on Par-La-Ville Road in Hamilton. I try to get more than one thing on the plate so (that) they marry together, visually and tastewise.

?Visually it has to look good and also taste good.?

He said his dish was meant to be in the French classical style, adding: ?I like to push boundaries.?

One of his difficulties during the competition was securing good carrots.

?Four or five weeks ago the local farmers had no rain for the carrots and they weren?t growing as quickly,? he said. ?I managed to get carrots that were quite good but very small for my practice sessions. ?But during the competition that farmer didn?t have any. The carrots that I did get were a little large and woodier.?

But he said part of competing was knowing how to deal with setbacks.

?One of the nicest compliments I got was from Fritz the head judge who said I worked like a symphony,? he said. ?Everything just flowed. Part of competing is practice, and trying to alleviate mistakes, but if something does go wrong, knowing how to deal with it. You can?t stop during the competition, you just have to keep going.?

Sadly, he also said it would be impossible to make his winning entry for patrons of the Pickled Onion.

?For the numbers we do at the Pickled Onion, you are not going to get a competition winning item on the menu,? he said. ?It is just not practical here. I do do various dishes with a twist to keep things interesting.?

However, he said his cooking is often inspired by life at the Pickled Onion.

?I love the Pickled Onion Restaurant for its vibrant colours,? he said. ?There are vibrant colours in the architecture. I can come out and inspire myself by looking at the restaurant or the view.?

For a copy of his winning recipe, Mr. Marston said people can contact him at the Pickled Onion.

Under competition conditions he had 45 minutes to make it, and five minutes to plate it.

?If you made this at home, you couldn?t do it in forty-five minutes,? he said. ?It wouldn?t be terribly difficult. I think it would be interesting to take someone, have them look at it and see how long it would take them to do it.?

To perfect the dish, Mr. Marston worked on it quite a bit before hand.

?I went to a couple of friends and said what do you think of this or that,? he said. ?It is marrying ideas together. I did a cook-off at a friend?s house. I did three different ideas such as the steak in different ways. My friends told me what they liked and didn?t like.?

Mr. Marston used to teach evening cooking classes at Warwick Secondary School.

?I think it is a great sadness that a lot of schools aren?t teaching cooking anymore,? he said. ?I think cooking brings a family together as a unit. For guys to cook, it is a great thing to take your girlfriend home and cook for her.

?I think we are losing that balance. It is far too easy to go and get fast food. I think it is important that cooking should be taught. In terms of dietary needs, if you are cooking for yourself, you know what goes into it. You know if there is too much monosodium glutamate or salt or whatever.?

Mr. Marston said he particularly wanted to help his sous chef, Richard Palethorpe for all his help.