Given the extremely high quality of the received candidacies it is not easy task picking up the winners of the 1st Sammic Scholarship among all the 33 candidates.

There are so many variables to consider that selecting 2 winners out of 33 is even harder than we had originally anticipated:

• The résumé gives us an insight of academic and professional background.
• The Essay shows us motivations and communication abilities.
• The Video reflects their culinary techniques, creativity and personality.

Finally, the candidates’ presence and activity in Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc) allows us to understand their networking scope, interests and quality of their productions. To all these variables we have to add each one of the jury member’s personal criteria and opinions, which add up to a really complex algorithm.

At this moment, each member of the jury member is individually studying each candidacy. Before the end of this week, they will all meet up and try to narrow the list down to the two winners. These two winners will be announced by Chef Martín Berasategui himself  next Monday, November 22nd at the San Sebastian Gastronomika Culinary Congress and will start their Basque Adventure in January 2011.

Meanwhile, we will try to keep you updated. You should follow us on Facebook and Twitter. You can also enjoy all the submitted videos in our website and comment them in the video channel that we’ve prepared in Vimeo. We’ve had a great time watching all these videos.