Chef Thomas Swaby won the Craft Guild of Chefs National Chef of the Year award at the VIP screening of the Craft Guild of Chefs final competition held at London’s Everyman Cinema.

More than 150 guests watched Swaby present its three-course menu to the jury, including maitake chawanmushi, mushroom ketchup, roasted maitake, nasturtium, pickled enoki, and mushroom tea. The chef’s main course was an English pork with Orkney, burnt applesauce, spinach, Chardonnay vinegar puree, apple, shallot sauce.

Swaby, head chef at Fort Inverlochy at Fort William, will soon begin his new assignment in the Caribbean for six months. Finishing second place very closely, Sussex’s sous chef Adam Smith at Gravetye Manor in East Grinstead and Ben Boeynaems, executive chef of the Beaumont hotel in London, were third.

Chef Swaby said: “National Chef of the Year is the most prestigious cooking competition in the UK and this is reflected in the quality of the judges we cook with, so winning this title is an absolute privilege.”