Award wins for the team at Ugly Butterfly in St. Ives, Cornwall

Ugly Butterfly's sous chef, Connor Blades, won UK Young Chef of the Year 2021 at the prestigious Young Chef Young Waiter UK 2021 competition. Junior sous chef Ali Halbert also performed excellently in the competition final, achieving second place, demonstrating exceptional talent in the kitchen at Ugly Butterfly in St. Ives, Cornwall.

The competition is renowned for recognising some of the best talents UK hospitality has to offer and was judged by, among others, Tom Kerridge and Ugly Butterfly's Adam Handling as head chef judge and Simon King as head waiter judge

.Winner Connor's inspiration comes from his surroundings in Cornwall and he uses innovative techniques to create delicious dishes that take advantage of the huge variety of fresh and seasonal local ingredients.

Adam Handling tells us, "Judging chef of the year has been super exciting. I didn't have voting rights in the competition as two of my team were in the final ten, so it makes it even more special that my fellow judges not only picked Connor as the winner but Ali in second. Connor really cares about the industry, cooks amazing dishes and works beautifully in a team. I always think of the relationship between chefs and waiters as being quite romantic, and the partnership he created with the waiter team was inspiring. Connor Blades is the future of hospitality, and I know for a fact that he's the future of my restaurants."

A new menu has been launched at the restaurant and bar in keeping with the restaurant's ethos of offering sustainable, local luxury British food, inspired by Cornwall. Guests can enjoy dishes such as Cornish crab with apple and jasmine. All seafood used in the restaurant is caught locally from fishermen in St. Ives and the signature dish at Ugly Butterfly is lobster with beef fat. Other new dishes include mushroom agnolotti with parsley and garlic, and squash with hazelnut and sheep's yoghurt which use ingredients from regenerative Cornish farm, Trenow Fields.

In keeping with the sustainability behind the menu at Ugly Butterfly, any waste from the kitchen is used by the bar team, maintaining the momentum towards being as zero-waste as possible. Bar manager Josh Linfitt has developed an innovative new cocktail menu in which every drink is crafted using some by-product from the kitchen. For example, the new Faltown Martini uses once-wasted oyster shells to infuse vodka and harness the flavour of the ocean, served straight out of the freezer.

To book, visit https://www.uglybutterfly.co.uk