We?ve all heard about them: the teenagers who drop out of school; turn to negative behaviour, and have no ambition in life beyond the next party.

Juliana D?Estelle-Roe, 18, is not one of these kids. She?s the kind you hear about on the radio talk shows.

Every morning she gets up at four a.m. to make the breakfast shift at the Fairmont Southampton hotel where she works as part of the National Training Board (NTB) Apprenticeship scheme. She is in her second year of the programme. Then she goes off to classes at the Bermuda College, goes home does her homework and tries to catch up on her many hours of lost sleep.

And if there is anything that Miss D?Estelle-Roe has, it is ambition. Her aims in life are pretty straight forward ? she wants to be Bermuda?s youngest top chef.

Earlier this month, she was one giant step closer to her goal when she won the junior competition at the Bermuda Culinary Arts Festival.

Ironically, I dropped cooking when I was in high school,? she said during an interview with this week. ?There was too much homework and I decided to take the easy route.?

On an educational level, it probably doesn?t matter too much since she has been working in restaurants around the Island since she was 14 years old.

She credits her father, Stuart Matthews, with getting her involved in the Festival.

?My dad read about the festival in the paper,? said Miss D?Estelle-Roe. ?The year before he wanted me to compete, but I had school. I made it a priority that I would do it the next year. I was just the right age so I applied.?

To win the competition Miss D?Estelle-Roe had to prepare 800 canap?s, appetisers that consist of tiny pieces of bread spread with something savoury. She had a first year apprentice helping her.

?On the morning of the competition we were given a mystery basket,? she said. ?In it was whole salmon, chicken, chicken livers, blue cheese, beets, starfruit and a bunch of things. We were given flour, sugar and the basics. We had 16 hours in total.

?The first hour we had to write a detailed menu. If you put something on the menu and didn?t use it points were deducted.?

Contestants had to make two different plates of canap?s, one with an animal protein, and one that was a vegetarian offering. The winning entries were lemon pepper crouton with lemon and dill mayonnaise, cucumber relish and Salmon mousse, and wild mushroom, sauteed spinach and blue cheese crepe towers.

The different canap? entries were scored for serving methods and presentation, portion size and nutritional balance, menu and ingredient compatibility, creativity and practicality, and also flavour, taste, texture and doneness which carried the greatest weight.

The winners of the junior competition were announced at a gala dinner at the end of the Festival. Her prize consisted of a crystal trophy and a trip to the National Restaurant Association Junior competition in Chicago, Illinois.

For such a young chef, she already has quite a bit of experience. She started cooking when she was little.

?When I was young I use to cook and bake with my godmother, Ann Perinchief, and then I decided I wanted to do it professionally,? she said. ?When I was 14 years old I was a short order cook at the Somerset Country Squire.?

When she was old enough, she was accepted into the the NTB apprenticeship programme. Unfortunately, the morning before she was supposed to start, Hurricane Fabian struck the Island. Plans were changed and shifted, and she found a placement at MEF Enterprises Limited.

Since then the NTB has sent her to restaurants and hotels all over the Island, including Little Venice, L?Oriental Restaurant, Waterlot Inn, Fourways and the Whaler Inn, to gain experience in the kitchen. She also takes Bermuda College certificate courses such as menu development and sanitation.

One might expect chefs in a busy restaurant to give a teenager a hard time, but the opposite is true.

?With my apprenticeship the other chefs try and teach me a lot,? she said. ?They understand that I am here to learn and don?t know everything.?

Part of it is that Miss D?Estelle-Roe appears to know what she is doing. In the kitchen at the Fairmont Southampton, Miss D?Estelle-Roe moved with confidence from fridge to work table, carefully arranging and chopping vegetables to make a tray of canap?s look appealing.

?Right now I want to be a chef,? she said. ?In order to do that you have to do pretty much everything. I haven?t been in the business long enough to decide what aspect of cooking I prefer.?

The junior competition at the Festival was not her first win. Last year she came second in another junior event or ?commis? competition held at the Bermuda College.

?That one was also a mystery basket,? she said. ?We had three and a half hours to prepare a three course meal for three people. Every competition I have been in has been different. I get to learn different styles of cooking.?

The prize in the Bermuda College competition was a trip to the Chaine-des-Rotisseurs cooking competition in Alberta, Canada.

?I was 17 at the time and I was up against 22 and 24-years-olds,? she said. ?So I was pretty proud of that. I plan on doing that again next year, because the international round is in Bermuda. It will be quite important to do quite well here in Bermuda, my own country.?

She is not yet sure if she wants to attend a cooking school abroad after finishing at the Bermuda College.

?I want to see how far my apprenticeship will take me up,? she said. ?If I still find it necessary then I will go back to school. I was told there might be an eight-week internship offered to train in the kitchen of a world-renowned chef. I?d love to do that.

?I just want to get off the Island. I need to get away to get the experience. I?d like to go to Europe. I think if I went to college it would set me back. I want to be the youngest top chef in Bermuda. I don?t want to wait until I am 45.?

During the festival she enjoyed interacting with the visiting celebrity chefs, particularly Aaron Sanchez.

?I was quite interested in Aaron Sanchez, his Latin style of cooking, mainly because I had heard of him before,? she said. ?He was quite friendly and willing to talk.?

This year, there weren?t many Bermudian chefs competing in the adult chef competition, the Escoffier Cup, but all that may be set to change next year. During the Escoffier Cup competition designed to find Bermuda?s top chef, organiser Stephan Juliusburger said there had been so much interest expressed in the competition that there may be as many as 30 chefs in next year?s competition.

And Steve Marston, the winner of the 2004 Escoffier Cup, should look out next year, because Miss D?Estelle-Roe hopes to compete with the big boys.

?I want to do the Escoffier Cup next year, but I don?t know if I am too young,? she said. ?It doesn?t make sense going back into the junior competition. It is challenging, but I have already accomplished that.?

Miss D?Estelle-Roe wanted to thank her coach Todd Ryall, a chef at the Fairmont Southampton hotel.