Interest in York's first-ever curry chef contest is running hotter than a vindaloo - with entries already pouring in and reflecting huge enthusiasm for the competition across the city.

Curry chefs from restaurants across the city threw down the oven glove to counterparts across the UK at the beginning of the month with the launch of Yorkshire's only curry competition of the year on May 2.

City of York Council is running the event as part of a long-running programme to improve the working relationship between Asian restaurant owners and the authority's environmental health team.

The local competition will feed into the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health's National Curry Chef 2002 competition sponsored by Cobra beer.

Each of the city's 40 Asian restaurants and take-aways has received an invitation to enter the local heat of the competition which will get its finals in July. The closing date is next Wednesday, May 22, but 20 entries have already been received.

Anita Stone, the council's senior environmental health officer, said, "The interest level has been phenomenal. I have spoken to the Institute and they tell me that between four and eight entries in a city heat is more typical - it's very exciting."

The competition will really get underway once the entries have closed. As well as the quality of the curry chefs' fare, the independent judges will also be scoring chefs on their understanding of good food hygiene and safety, hazard awareness (i.e. in relation to raw and cooked foods and cooking temperatures), storage and cross contamination, cleaning and structure and personal hygiene. The 2002 National Curry Chef Grand Final will be held in September 2002, at the Harrogate International Centre. The event forms part of the CIEH Annual Environmental Health Conference and Exhibition.

The competition originally started out in Bradford in 1992 as a way of improving relations between Environmental Health Departments and the Asian restaurant proprietors.

Restaurant owner Iqbal Chowdhury, secretary of York's Bangladeshi Centre, said, "This is a perfect opportunity for local businesses to get together to present their skills to the public and show that they are complying with hygiene and safety."

The background to the York competition is a year-long council project by Anita. Anita visited all the city's curry outlets in a bid to raise awareness of the council's role and improve the service to owners and chefs.

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more information and background on www.york.gov/whatsnew