Dhayvesh Sidhpura won the competition by marrying “east with west” in his take on Yorkshire pudding

“I followed my instincts, what felt right,” said Dhayvesh Manish Sidhpura, who won $2,500 for coming in first in The Turkey Farmers of Ontario street food competition.

Sidhpura spent the week leading up to the competition day contemplating how he would bring everything together in the end, making adjustments when he thought of “something new.”

The contenders were tasked with using local turkey, which was to be purchased before the competition, as their key ingredient in their street food.

“We all felt that the winning dish was a really great representation of east meets west,” Anne Yarymowich, chef school professor at George Brown College (GBC) said regarding Sidhpura’s dish.

Tallis Voakes, from Cara Operations, and Joey Restaurant’s Mike Kowbell were also invited to join John Higgins, the director of GBC’s chef school, to determine which dish would be dubbed the best.

Representatives from The Turkey Farmers of Ontario also joined in the festivities to observe the different ways in which the students incorporated turkey into their street foods.

“Using the Yorkshire pudding as a vessel for the curry was beautiful,” Yarymowich added, who further commented on the smart combination of green beans and carrots, making the dish more traditional.

She applauded Sidhpura for the creativity.

Sidhpura explained that “Yorkshire pudding itself is a kind of a bread” and he thought the gravy would work just as well with it as it would with paratha, a type of Indian bread.

His English chef and mentor approved of the idea and after trying it out it made for a heavenly combination.

However, it took three tests to get right.

The onion bhaji, which can be best described as onion fritters, sat on top of the gravy and can be found on every street corner in Mumbai, where Sidhpura grew up.

Except, instead of shaping them into the traditional balls, he chose to leave them in strips which led to a more pleasing bite.

The newspaper style sheet on which the pudding was served mimicked how food is served on the busy streets of Mumbai.

As he approached the end of plating, he reached into the fridge for his “secret” ingredient, cans of Sprite, and placed one on the tray for each judge as a treat.

With ten minutes to spare, Sidhpura could not wait to present, and with the judges waiting to taste, he made a request to go early.

“All four competitors really brought their A game,” Yarymovitch commented.

Kayoko Kagami, who placed fourth in the competition, served a Japanese barbecue-style turkey rice burger.

She took the ideas of rice balls and menchi-katsu, “deep fried cutlets” and had a healthier idea in mind to create rice buns with a baked turkey patty.

Urmil Rathod, who came in third, made about ten trips to the tandoor oven, running back and forth in between two culinary labs to cook his seekh kebab that was “served with spiced mint chutney.”

Youngyup Chang, the runner up, presented turkey gangjeong based on a favourite dish of his, Korean street food made with “deep fried rice puff coated with honey” and also brought in his mother-in-law’s fermented gochujeong to use.

“They rose to the challenge of using turkey as a protein and brought something from their own cultures and their own backgrounds,” Yarymovitch further explained.

Sidhpura’s motivation to first get involved with this competition was to get rid of any fears associated with competing and is now confident he will be doing more competitions in the future.

“I don’t know, I have no idea”, Sidhpura responded jokingly when he was asked on how he felt about winning. “I wasn’t expecting this, I still don’t believe that I’ve won, maybe it’ll take a couple of hours.”