Gardenia Breads recently held a sandwich-making competition that was participated in by teams from hotel and restaurant management and culinary universities in Manila.
“It was really difficult to be one of the judges in this year’s Next Big Sandwich Hit (NBSH) competition. Not only were all the sandwiches delicious but they were all works of art,” said chef Jeremy Favia, one of the judges.
The last stage of this year’s NBSH competition, the Championship Finale, coincided with the Happy Bread Day celebration recently held at the Mall of Asia Music Hall.
It attracted fans and followers of all 10 school teams: Adamson University, Far Eastern University, La Consolacion College,
Sexy Sandwich Category.
National University, Philippine Women’s University, St. Paul Quezon City, St. Scholastica’s College Manila, University of the East, University of the Philippines and University of Sto. Tomas.
The two main components which comprised the NBSH Championship Finale are Audience Votes and Main Cooking Challenge. During the Main Cooking Challenge, each team had to present their two thematic full-sized sandwich recipes to the judges and were given 40 minutes to prepare both.
The two sandwich themes were Sexy Sandwich and Philippine City Sandwich.
The first is described as a healthy yet delicious sandwich made with any or a combination of the following Gardenia breads: Gardenia Classic White Bread, Gardenia High Fiber Wheat Bread, Gardenia High Fiber Wheat Raisin Loaf, Gardenia Wheat Cranberry Loaf, Gardenia Slim ’n’ Fit Wheaten Bread, and Gardenia Wheat Pandesal.
Sandwich Category
The Philippine City Sandwich is a sandwich that best depicts a certain Philippine city assigned to each team. Teams had to use the Classic Gardenia White Bread alone or combined with the other variants.
“We really designed the competition so the audience could play a role in choosing the winners,” said Thea Tan, marketing manager of Gardenia.
The grand prize winner of the 2014 Next Big Sandwich Hit was National University. First runner-up was La Consolacion College while second runner-up went to Philippine Women’s University.
The grand prize winner won a cash prize of P80,000, P30,000 worth of Gardenia bread for business, P50,000 worth of bread for the winning school plus kitchen appliances. The first runner-up got P40,000 and the second runner-up received P20,000.