First CHEF:IN Awards honour German women chefs on 14 September

The first CHEF:IN Awards are presented on 14 September at Foodlab Hamburg, naming nominees in seven categories built entirely around women in German fine dining.

Doors open with an aperitif at 5.30pm, with the show starting at 6pm under host Muschda Sherzada. The platform behind the awards, CHEF:IN, built the shortlists from a wider watch list of 27 names spanning head chefs, sommelières, bartenders and hospitality managers, the first time the list has looked beyond the stove.

The organisers' starting point is a gap, not a celebration: only around 4% of Germany's starred chefs are women. CHEF:IN's founders describe the awards as a way of making that imbalance visible rather than waiting for guides to close it on their own.

Only 4% of Germany's starred chefs are women. The awards exist to make that number impossible to ignore.

Who is up for Chef of the Year

The headline category, Chef of the Year presented by Transgourmet Cook, lists five names: Alina Meissner-Bebrout, Julia A. Leitner, Nathalie Leblond, Rosina Ostler and Sarah Hallmann. Leitner runs the kitchen at Coda in Berlin and Ostler leads Alois in Munich, both Michelin-starred addresses.

An independent jury chaired by Anja Wasserbäch selected the nominees across all seven categories, working from restaurant visits and peer recommendations rather than open submissions.

A watch list built to be reused

The wider CHEF:IN Watch List of 27 names is designed to outlast the ceremony: guide editors and event organisers have used earlier versions of the list as a source for their own selections, and the platform expects the same this year. Gault&Millau's Paris gala handed its top trophy to La Table du 11 in September, a reminder that most guides still work chef by chef rather than category by category.

The award also lands alongside wider industry data on strain in the profession: a survey published this month found 65% of hospitality managers cite the job itself as their main mental health pressure. CHEF:IN's organisers say visibility and working conditions are related questions, not separate ones.

Winners are announced on the night; CHEF:IN has not said whether it will publish scores or juror notes afterwards.