Entries now closed, thank you.

Food transcends language barriers, cultural differences and can bring people together, enhancing social gatherings in a way that nothing else can.  You may have a wonderful memory of a special dish that you’ve enjoyed whilst on your travels, or perhaps an entertaining anecdote of an item of street food that enhanced your travel experiences and that you’d like to recommend to others.  There are unusual and mouthwatering dishes to be found all around the world, and we want to hear about your stand-out plate of food, as well as the story that brings it to life.

The First Prize for our winning entry in the competition is a fantastic £100 Sous Chef gift voucher which gives you the freedom to choose any products that take your fancy from their brilliant website, and have them delivered straight to your door.  Take your pick from a wide-range of gourmet ingredients, bespoke gift sets, practical cookware, inspiring cookbooks and beautiful tableware.  Keen cooks who appreciate unusual and quality products will be spoilt for choice!

The Runner’s Up prize is a colourful and tasty Round the World Chilli Tour set,   worth £35, which includes 11 different chillies and hot sauces.  It also includes a tasting card with recipe ideas too.  See more details here.

Sous Chef is a UK-based company who provide a variety of exciting products for adventurous and aspiring chefs who are keen to bring an international flavour to their repertoire.  Here is more about what makes them so good at what they offer:

Sous Chef is the online destination for adventurous cooks, offering ingredients, equipment, tableware and gifts inspired by leading chefs and international cuisine.

Sous Chef’s innovative product range has been widely featured in the press, including the Observer Food Monthly, the Independent, Sunday Telegraph, Evening Standard, Radio Times, Stylist, Shortlist, BBC Good Food, Delicious, Olive, Good Housekeeping and Homes & Gardens magazines.

We’re based in London with a warehouse full of fabulous things, ready for next day delivery. Sous Chef has served over fifteen thousand customers including some of the top Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe since we opened in August 2012.

We’re all about:

Flavour – from the world’s hottest chilli to Raymond Blanc’s favourite olive oil, the numbing heat of Sichuan pepper to the fruity acidity of raspberry vinegar, we’ve scoured the world to bring you ingredients which are bursting with flavour.

Discovery – sample a new cuisine with our convenient cookbook sets; taste the difference between the smoky-sweetness of a guajillo and the citrus heat of a piquin in our chilli selection; infuse cocktails or teas with our edible flowers; sample red Hawaiian salt or Chinese preserved black beans – there’s a world of flavour to explore at Sous Chef.

Provenance – we source with care from producers who share our passion for flavour and quality. Our peppers, for example, are sourced from a single harvest and region, enabling you to enjoy the unique flavour of that terroir.

Excitement – bring theatre to your table with a Himalayan salt plate; try your hand at sperification with our molecular ingredients or infuse your dishes with smoke – let your creativity run wild at Sous Chef!

Authority – we’ve tasted the ingredients, tested the equipment, served guests with our tableware and cooked from our cookbooks. We have the best job in the world! So if you need advice just give us a ring – we’re always happy to help.

Service – we work hard to bring you the best possible service and consistently enjoy exceptionally high customer satisfaction ratings in independent Feefo surveys.

You can connect with Sous Chef via Social Media on Twitter or browse their products and food and recipes blog on their website.

One of the many positive aspects about travelling is getting the opportunity to eat out in restaurants and enjoy the food offered at your accommodation and also further afield.  Maybe you were privileged to experience an authentic meal in the home of a local, or perhaps you enjoyed a beautifully presented celebration meal in a Michelin-starred restaurant?

We want to hear about the culinary experience that knocked your socks off whilst you were away.  It could be that you had never tasted anything quite like it before and begged, borrowed or stole the recipe before you returned home, perhaps the experience of eating a new and exciting dish was enhanced by the people that you were eating it with, or the situation that you were in.  Maybe you want to share your story of a food-lovers trip that you went on specifically to find out more about how food is produced, cooked and enjoyed in a particular part of the world.

On a different tack, we’d also love to hear about your less-than-wonderful food experiences, where you weren’t enamoured with a particular food experience, or you ended up being a bit adventurous and ended up eating something unusual – you could have loved or hated it – but we’d love to hear about it.

Whatever your angle, if you’ve got an interesting food-related tale to share, enter our competition by sharing your experience in up to 500 words, and if you’ve got a photo to accompany your story too, that would be fantastic.

The competition will be judged by a panel of travel writers, who will judge your piece on:

• How it engages the reader and creates interest in your food-related story or anecdote.
• How you have used description and creative writing skills to create an entertaining and enjoyable read.
• How you have captured the international theme of the competition, and written about food from another country or culture.

We look forward to receiving your entry – or as many entries as you wish to enter online – and wish you the best of luck in winning one of the fabulous food-related prizes up-for-grabs!