Chef Kristīne Strode on her path to the Latvian Restaurant Pastry Chef of the Year title
Qualified and award-winning chef Kristīne Strode has won the title "Latvian Restaurant Pastry Chef of the Year 2026". In an interview she recalls her first cake in childhood and her first competition, where she was late presenting a dish to the jury.
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Qualified and award-winning chef Kristīne Strode has been named "Latvian Restaurant Pastry Chef of the Year 2026". Her story was published on 7 November 2026 by the cooking portal Receptes.lv, which belongs to the Latvian news site TVNET.
From a childhood cake to chef training
Strode baked her first cake as a child. She only learned what an omelette is when she began training as a chef.
The first competition
When she first entered a competition, she says, she had every precondition for not winning. The venue had a gas stove, while at work she had practised on an induction stove and had not considered this difference. As a result, she missed the time by which the dish had to be delivered to the jury.
She notes that nobody who is late has ever won. The available excerpt of the article breaks off at this point, so the rest of the story and the outcome of that first attempt are not stated in the source.
The headline uses a remark by Strode about pastry work: in her view, boiling a soup is easier than baking a sponge cake.
