Mandy Wingert

Mandy Wingert still gets shivers down her spine when she remembers walking in behind the Canadian flag as a competitor in the IKA-Culinary Olympics in Erfurt, Germany.

That's right - the Culinary Olympics. Similar to the sporting Olympics, at least in style, the Culinary Olympics pit teams of chefs from around the world against each other in a cooking competition like no other.

In her 2008 event, Wingert and three other teammates on the Canadian National Culinary Youth Team had just three hours to cook a main course meal for 110 people. They had to do it all in a Plexiglas kitchen, with the judges and spectators watching their every move.

It was the perfect preparation for Wingert's newest high-pressure cooking gig, as a member of the Canadian culinary program in the Canada Pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

"This is going to be the adventure of a lifetime," Wingert says of Shanghai.

Wingert's Canadian team won a silver medal in the "hot" competition and a gold medal in the "cold" competition at the 2008 Culinary Olympics, and Wingert has no doubt that preparing her menu under such intense scrutiny will serve her well in Shanghai. The six young chefs, including Wingert, who will work under leader Wayne Murphy at the Canada Pavilion will also be cooking under intense time pressure, using Canadian and local ingredients, to serve visitors and important guests at Expo 2010.

"I thrive on it," Wingert says of the stress. "I just hope that we can spread what Canada's really all about and the culinary side of Canada."

Before being nominated to be part of Canada's team at Expo by the Culinary Institute of Canada in Charlottetown, PEI, where she went to school, Wingert, who is 25, grew up in Regina, SK. One of her earliest cooking memories involves making strudels with her grandmother when she was four years old.

"I was always in the kitchen with my Grandma and my Mom and Dad," says Wingert. That fond childhood memory has shaped Wingert's desire to be a pastry chef - and influenced her choice of dessert at the Culinary Olympics, where she made a warm chocolate and prune cake that she has recreated more than a few times.

Prior to leaving for Shanghai, Wingert worked as a sous chef at the Delta Bessborough Hotel in Saskatoon. She gave up that job for the chance to represent Canada again, this time in Shanghai.

"It's a huge honour," she says simply.