Leanna Estis is on her way to a prestigious cooking competition in Istanbul next year, after winning the junior round in Bermuda this month.

It was Ms Estis’s second time participating in the Jeunes Chefs Rôtisseurs Competition, organised by the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, a global culinary appreciation group.

“I was very nervous,” Ms Estis told The Royal Gazette. “The first time I competed in 2023, I was sure I would win and I came second. That was because I was 20 minutes late on my food.”

This year she did not have such high expectations of herself.

“I just kept my head down and did what I could,” she said.

She finished five minutes early.

Her competitors were colleagues from the Hamilton Princess & Beach Club — Wilfredo Hidalgo and Xah-Niyah Williams. All of them are under 27 and work under the mentorship of hotel executive chef Adam Ashe.

Ms Estis is a demi chef de partie at the Crown & Anchor restaurant at the hotel.

During the competition, the chefs were presented with a mystery basket containing duck, red mullet fish, figs, eggplants and feta cheese.

They had to use at least half of these ingredients in a three-course menu for four people. A fully equipped pantry with standard ingredients was also available to aid their culinary creations.

They knew ahead of time that they would be cooking with red mullet but everything else was a surprise.

“Bermudians call red mullet goat fish because it has a little goatee,” Ms Estis explained.

Fish was the perfect protein for Ms Estis. She has been helping her fisherman father, Martin Estis, to fillet fish since she was 10 or 11.

She had also cooked red mullet before. This time she used it to make a ceviche – a cold dish consisting of fish or shellfish marinated in citrus and seasonings.

“Red mullet is a very soft fish,” Ms Estis said. “It is tiny, bony and very tricky to cook. We had to use mullet from overseas, so it was risky making a ceviche in terms of freshness, but the judges really liked it. Everyone else cooked their fish.”

She found that fig worked really well in the ceviche.

To pick a winner, the judges considered factors including the colour of the food, presentation, sanitary cooking habits, plating and flavours.

“The standard was very high so they picked up on very small things,” Ms Estis said.

“It was very nerve-racking. I did not think I had won at all.”

When her name was called as the winner, she was so surprised she cried. Her fellow contestant and best friend, Ms Williams, gave her a big hug in congratulations.

“That was really nice,” Ms Estis said.

Her prize is representing Bermuda in the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs International competition, scheduled for April 2026 in Istanbul, Turkey.

“I have a year to practise,” she said.

She will train with competition organiser, Chris Malpas, who took part in the competition years ago. Mr Malpas is Conseiller Culinaire at the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, a culinary appreciation group with chapters worldwide, including Bermuda.

Butterfield Bank and her employer, the Hamilton Princess, will provide food for her to practise with.

Ms Estis has loved cooking her whole life.

“It was my passion on the weekends,” she said. “It made me so happy to make my parents breakfast. I burnt a lot of bacon but my parents knew before I did, what I was going to do with my life. I was born this way.”

She got into the industry at 16, when her mother, Dianne Estis, bought a food truck.

“It was called Lonestar and sold seafood,” Ms Estis said. “I ran that for her with one other chef. It was based in Somerset.”

The Estis family operated the truck for two years before closing it because of the slow winter season.

“It was a lot of fun,” Ms Estis said. “But we had hardly any customers in the winter. It was awesome and eye-opening.”

Today she misses it, even the bad days when they would have 30 impatient customers at the truck, all waiting for their orders.

She never went to culinary school but felt she has been training her whole life.

“Every day I am learning,” she said. “My ultimate goal is to run my own restaurant. After that I would like to own my own franchise and have my recipes put out there.”

She hates being asked what type of food she likes to cook.

“I like to cook whatever people want to eat,” she said.

However, she admitted that she loves to make fresh pasta.

“I learnt to make it when I worked at Huckleberry,” she said. She spent two years working in the restaurant at the Rosedon Hotel, after her family’s lunch truck closed. “I do big batches for my family and they keep it in the freezer at home.”

Ironically, she cannot eat pasta herself. Doctors diagnosed coeliac disease when she was 17, a condition where the immune system attacks the person’s own tissues when they eat gluten.

“At first, I ignored the diagnosis,” she said. “I would get a lot of stomach pain and bloating after eating it. I kept eating it for awhile and then one day I thought, ‘I just can’t go on doing this. I have to take care of myself’.”

She still cooks with wheat products at work.

“If I have to taste something I will taste it and then spit out,” she said.

Now she is learning all she can about Turkish cooking in preparation for the overseas contest next year.