The 27th Shanghai International Hospitality Equipment & Food Service Expo (HOTELEX Shanghai 2018) was opened at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre. Apart from the appealing food at the show, the high salaries commanded by those with excellent culinary skills also astonished the reporter.

This trade show for food service and catering, the largest of its kind in the country, is a feast for both your eyes and mouth. The Expo has attracted participants from more than 125 countries and districts, including mainland China, Italy, Spain, the U.S, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

The chefs have brought with them a variety of culinary skills demonstrations with different themes like Italian style, desserts and innovative fusion cuisines. The celebrity chefs will exemplify how to cook these cuisines and offer free samples of the food to the audience. The Expo also features a dazzling array of events like the China Master Bartender Competition, Shanghai Pizza Master Competition, CLW Patisserie Elite Competition and China Latte Art Championship.

Zhao Kai began preparing his chocolate completion entry at eight in the morning and delivered it eight hours later. He has participated in the exhibition for seven consecutive years and was the champion last year. He emerged victorious again this year, winning the Chocolate Group of the Patisserie Elite Competition. He said that he has been engaged in the dessert catering business for nearly ten years and has gone through the ups and downs of the industry. Now, with ever-more finely tuned baking skills, particularly working with chocolate, he earns an annual monthly salary of forty to fifty thousand yuan.

Fondant cakes are another focus of the show and the term refers to sugar-based pastes used in preparing and decorating cakes.

The above fondant cakes were made by master baker Zhou Yi, who has been engaged in making fondant cakes for six years. He told the reporter that it takes an average of five to ten days for him to make a fondant cake. As the owner of a cake shop and a training organization in Suzhou, and winner of many international competitions, Zhou Yi has been dubbed the “king of fondant”. He said that the market is still short of specialized fondant cake chefs and therefore good chefs earn an average monthly salary of thirty to forty thousand yuan, with the best chefs commanding as much as sixty thousand.

Of note is that many of the marvelous fondant cakes at the show were inspired by cartoon works.

Kit, a handsome bartender with showman-like skills also attracted the attention of the reporter.

Kit comes from Hong Kong and after receiving schooling in Europe has been engaged in the drinks business there since his graduation.

In Europe, bartending is a highly paid and highly respected job. Kit came back to Hong Kong 4 years ago but found that his monthly salary was reduced to only fifteen thousand HKD. Despite the relatively low pay, an increasing number of people are becoming interested in this profession in mainland China. By virtue of Kit’s years of experience in bartending, he has now become a bartender trainer, with a salary as high as a top fondant chef. Clearly, if you have the skills, it pays to know how to entice both the eyes and the palate.