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AGRANA and Gault&Millau award title "Chef of the Year 2015" to Richard Rauch (Steira Wirt)

Date: 03.10.2014

The Chef of the Year 2015 is RICHARD RAUCH
Restaurant Steira Wirt, Trautmannsdorf


It is precisely the combination of the endearing old-fashioned interior of the inn with its amazing terrace and the food that Richard Rauch and his team conjure up on your plate that makes the Steira Wirt restaurant so unique. Rauch, a trained chef and globetrotter, creates contemporary cuisine which is free of unnecessary extras and, above all, exceptional in terms of its taste, and all of this with outstanding attention to detail. In the 2014 Austrian Gault&Millau Guide, this 3-star chef scored 17 out of a maximum of 20 points.

PRESTIGOUS AWARD
The Chef of the Year award from Gault&Millau is the most prestigious award in the Austrian catering industry, the Oscar of the culinary world. The prize was awarded this year for the 32nd time. AGRANA has been supporting this event for 22 years. As a globally successful company, AGRANA adds value to natural resources in its three business segments: sugar, starch and fruit.

Rauch was delighted to receive the award of Chef of the Year: "I am totally thrilled to receive this title, one that is a major goal of every Austrian chef. All the more so given that I am very young and the Steira Wirt is not located in a major city. For my sister Sonja and I, having always believed that we can be successful with our passion for good cuisine even out in the country, this is the greatest acknowledgement that we could have asked for. And it also opens a new chapter for our inn and for me as a chef given that Sonja and I still have lots of plans."

Johann Marihart, CEO of AGRANA Beteiligungs-AG: "I am particularly delighted that Richard Rauch has received the award this year. He represents traditional and yet also modern cuisine which is characterised by the use of regional and top quality products. This aspiration of innovatively further developing top quality tried-and-tested concepts corresponds with the corporate philosophy of AGRANA."

Martina and Karl Hohenlohe, Publishers of the Gault&Millau Guide on this exceptional talent: "For several years the young chef Richard Rauch has created taste sensations in a 120-year-old village inn in eastern Styria which are hard to match not only in Styria. With almost legendary grandeur, Rauch's light-weight menus combine apparently conventional ingredients such as sauerkraut, ham, rabbit and kohlrabi with exotic elements such as Matcha, Yuzu, Dashi and orange blossom to produce dishes which immediately rehabilitate the overused buzzword fusion. For us, this is well worth the title of Chef of the Year which we are delighted to award here."

PROFILE OF A STAR CHEF: Richard Rauch
Rauch was born on 28 May 1985 in Feldbach, Styria. After successfully graduating from high school and the tourism college in Bad Gleichenberg, he completed training to become a chef at his family's own restaurant Steira Wirt where he has worked as chef de cuisine since 2003.
He celebrated his first successes back in 2005 when he was awarded the title Landlord of the Year (Wo isst Österreich?/Christoph Wagner) and secured his first Gault&Millau star the following year. 

THE SPONSOR
SUGAR. STARCH. FRUIT. – AGRANA Beteiligungs-AG is an internationally successful and sustainability-oriented company in these three segments. The core competence of AGRANA lies in adding value to agricultural commodities to create high quality products for the food processing industry. With around 8,800 employees, AGRANA is active on all continents. The Group generated revenues of over three billion euros in its 2013|14 financial year.
AGRANA products are a key component of daily life. The product range extends from sugar in food and starch in textiles and paper to fruit preparations for yoghurts, fruit juice concentrates as well as bioethanol as an environmentally friendly admixture to petrol. The brand Wiener Zucker, through which AGRANA is represented in the Austrian food retail sector, covers a wide range of sugar and speciality sugar products. With its outstanding levels of quality and attractive packaging design, the Wiener Zucker product range is very much a part of the sweet side of life in Austria.

Caption (from left): Martina Hohenlohe (Editor-in-Chief of Gault&Millau), Johann Marihart (CEO of AGRANA Beteiligungs-AG), Richard Rauch (Chef of the Year 2015) and Karl Hohenlohe (Publisher of Gault&Millau).

Photograph: Gerhard Deutsch

Enquiries:
Markus Simak, Press Officer of AGRANA Beteiligungs-AG, Tel. +43-1-211 37-12084
Martina Hohenlohe, Editor-in-Chief of GAULT&MILLAU, Tel. +43-1-712 43 84-10
Karl Hohenlohe, Publisher of GAULT&MILLAU, Tel. +43-1-712-43-84-20

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