As we sit in the vast exhibition hall as the grand finale of the 2025 S.Pellegrino Young Chef Academy Competition draws to a close, Ben tells me that becoming a chef felt a little bit like destiny. Growing up in Vancouver, Canada, Miller came to cooking quite by chance. 'There was a class in school called 'work experience',' he begins. 'I thought I'd go for it as I'd miss a block of school and I'd get to work.' What that experience would be exactly, was literally down to fate – he picked a job out of a hat and, luckily for the wider world, it was for a local catering company.

Ben grew up in Vancouver, Canada, with a nurse for a mother and a firefighter for a father. He credits his parents with giving him an iron-clad work ethic, something which was spotted early on at his catering gig as a hungry 15-year-old, and later at culinary school in Calgary, Alberta. 

'My chef saw that I was a passionate cook and she eventually signed me up and I went on to represent Canada at [my first] cookery competition in Hong Kong.'  

Ben caught the bug. During his time in Canada and throughout his career he'd relish in the pressure of the competitive cookery environment, going on to compete in over a dozen global competitions. 

'Since then, I’ve done maybe 14 or 15 cookery competitions in total. They are a lot of hard work and the applications for these things are very intense, but I love them.'

In 2020, Ben was set to move to Copenhagen before the global pandemic changed his plans. In 2022, he found himself working at the two-Michelin-starred Clove Club in London, before staging at restaurants across the city. When he landed at Alex Dilling at the Café Royal, he put down roots.  

While London lived up to Ben's expectations as a global pinnacle of fine dining ('so many Michelin stars, so many famous chefs; it’s a great food city with a lot to draw inspiration from'), the creative inspiration for his competition dish was far more personal. 

'It's called An Ode to Sam Yee,' Ben says, 'and it's all about a past relationship of mine'. There's a softness to the way Ben describes not only the dish, but the relationship that proved so impactful in his life. 'We were together for years, and the dish pays homage to that relationship. I never grew up with much of a food culture, but being invited into her family and discovering her culture and food heritage was so special. I saw there could be more to food than just the 'craft' of it. It’s not just work; you can tell stories. She loved food, and really cared for it.'

In Milan, the competitors have five hours to cook a single, incomprehensibly complex dish. All the judges and mentors said every single one of these dishes could be served in a three-Michelin-starred restaurant. As such, the balance between innovation, technicality and achievability must be flawless: try to do too much and you'll run out of time; too little and your competitors will leave you behind. 

Ben's dish is both personal and complex. 'It's a British duck breast which is stuffed with a double farce. The first is made with lardo and truffles while the other contains Alsace bacon. The duck is served alongside a siu mai-style dumpling, but made with duck as opposed to pork, alongside some truffle and foie gras, sitting in an Alsace bacon consomme.' 

The duck is a beautiful bit of cookery, served with Chinese broccoli and shiso, alongside a remarkably made sauce. But there's more: rice with shredded confit duck leg cooked in five spice, ginger and browned butter, topped with a sabayon and, served separately, a tea. 

'The tea is really special,' says Ben. 'It's a hand-crafted, 1,000-day dry-aged lily flower tea that gets scented six times with jasmine blossoms. We serve a single blossom in the cup alongside the dish so as you pour the tea over the blossom, the flower opens up.'

In each element there is a deeply personal connection sitting alongside a well-considered piece of competition cookery. It's something his UK chef-mentor, Santiago Lastra, has been guiding him on. 

'Ben's dish was already good when we started working together,' says Santiago, 'but we thought, how do we take it from good to great?'

Each chef competitor gets a mentor whose role is to guide, ask the right questions, and open up the possibility of further exploration within the dish. For Santiago, the dish was delicious, and the narrative was strong, so to guide Ben throughout his journey it was a case of looking at the granular detail of each element of his dish and asking: 'Can we make it better?'

'We looked at the texture of the dumpling, how the two farces come together and if we could introduce any more freshness to the dish. These are the tiny details you have to look at again and again at this level.'

While Ben's homage to his former partner didn't land him the trophy this year, the level of cookery throughout the competition was revelatory to see. S.Pellegrino have invested a lot of time, effort and money into putting the Young Chef Academy Competition firmly on the global map: the competition now sits as one of the world's very best. 

Reflecting on the competition, and Ben's future, he is both humble and just maybe hungry for a little more. 'I think this is my last one, but then, I say that every time'.