December 2011

Dear Members and Friends of Les Toques Blanches Korea,

The Year is fast coming to a close and I hope that we can all look back and say “what a great year it was”.

I know that when I look back I can certainly say that Les Toques Blanches Korea had yet another great year.

The LTB Board has worked hard to make this Club what it is today and so to my colleagues on the Board a big thank you for your hard work and dedication.

One of our major achievements this year is that we are finally a fully registered Association. This means we now have a Korean Tax Number which makes all the membership fees, donations and other contributions to LTB a Tax deductable expenditure for you and your companies.

I would like to thank our Board Member Ian Kim who has been working very hard to get all of this achieved.

Our Membership has continued to grow considerably and our Monthly Membership Meetings have all been very well attended and very informative thanks to the interesting Presentations that our Members and Guests have made.

My appreciation and thanks goes out to all of the Hotels and Restaurants who have hosted our meetings and have supported LTB this year!

LTB and our members have been featured in several magazines and newspapers and so we received some very good publicity during the year.

On the Culinary side, LTB was able to get involved in several events and we were asked by the event organizers to provide our Support, Expertise and Judgments for their respective Competitions. The major event was of course the MLA Blackbox Culinary Challenge in September.

A few of us were able to participate in the WACS Judges seminar and receive the official WACS Judges Certificate which means that we can now be appointed as official Judges in all WACS sanctioned competitions.

LTB had also a very good year in regards to Charity

Thanks to the generosity of Agrosuper and GSA Korea we have been able to give our Gokseong Families a very memorable Children’s Day experience by bringing them up to here to Seoul and spend a night here at the Grand Hilton and have some Fun visiting Namsan, the Teddy bear Museum, the 63 Buildings Aquarium and also have a great Children’s Day BBQ here at the Grand Hilton.

We had several members who directly supported the Families in Gokseong.

On behalf of the Families in Gokseong, many thanks for your generosity.

Thanks to the generosity of our Members we were also able to donate a sizable amount of Money to the Saint Helen Hospiz for the Elderly to help with the installation of fixed Oxygen Supply Lines.

We also had great Educational & Social Events.

One very interesting and memorable educational trip was certainly the visit to the Hwayo Soju Factory and the KwangJuYo Pottery Factory

We had our Spring and Autumn LTB Bowling Challenges and of course the Annual Family BBQ which this year was held at the US Army Yongsan Garrison thanks to our Honorary Board Member Tim Mitchell and affiliated Member and Garrison Commander Bill Huber who made this event possible.

Of course we finished the year with yet another fantastic well attended Family Christmas Event.

However we as a Chef Association also have a few challenges.

One of which is the dwindling numbers of Chefs actively participating in LTB

So my challenge goes out to all the chefs who have newly arrived in Korea and especially the ones who have been here in Seoul for a while but haven’t really participated in the Club for whatever reasons.

Please step up and get involved and participate.

In order to be a successful Chefs Association we need active Chefs!

Make suggestions how we can improve and get involved to help make those changes and improvements.

Don’t just sit on the fence, don’t complain and wait for things to happen! Get involved, be the driving force!

LTB can only be as good as YOU the Chef’s want it to be. LTB is Your Club!

I would like to close by thanking our Corporate Members who have continuously supported LTB very generously during the year.

Without your generosity and support LTB could not be where we are today.

I wish you all the blessings for an enjoyable and hopefully stress free Holiday Season, a very Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year. 

With best Culinary regards

Remo Berdux

President

Les Toques Blanches Korea

www.ltbkorea.com