Pilot sous chef flies high with young chef of the year nomination

Pilot chef Noora Heiska has been announced as a finalist for the Good Food Guide 2025 Young Chef of the Year. She is one of five finalists in NSW/ACT, with the winner set to be announced at the Good Food Awards on 11 November.

Noora isn’t the only Canberran to be recognised: Such and Such venue manager Caitlin Baker has also been nominated for excellence in service for the second year in a row.

Noora is excited to show off Canberra’s dining scene to the folks in Sydney.

“To be included is an honour, obviously, and I think it’s nice to be able to go up against all these big restaurants from Sydney and represent Canberra. We’re still under the radar a little bit, so this is an opportunity to say, ‘There are restaurants and chefs in Canberra who are on par with a lot of Sydney chefs!’”

Finland-born Noora came to Australia on a backpacking trip and fell in love with the place. She spent six years working at Narrabundah fine dining restaurant XO before moving to Pilot in 2023.

“I got a job in Canberra and just really liked it. it’s kind of like I got stuck here but in a good way!” Noora said.

While Asian cooking wasn’t a big part of her training in Finland, Noora took the opportunity to learn from Chef AK Ramakrishna at XO and now enjoys the mix of cultures and influences she brings to food at Pilot.

“At Pilot, there’s a lot of flexibility. It’s Modern Australian in the most vague way possible! We take our influence from all over the world, and that’s what I really like about it. It’s an opportunity to combine all the skills I’ve learned from across my career with flavours from my home in Northern Europe,” she said.

“There’s a melting pot approach, which is Modern Australian cuisine at its very best.”

The Young Chef Award recognises excellence in hospitality for chefs under 30 who aren’t owners or executive chefs. It’s a way to reward up-and-coming stars of the scene. Noora is the only female finalist in this year’s awards, in a year where discussions of culture in the hospitality scene have dominated the media.

“I’m glad to be nominated. I wish I wasn’t the only female, but it’s still a very male-dominated field. I don’t feel like gender defines whether you can be a chef or not, but [being the only female nominee] does speak to how difficult it can be for women in the industry.”

Noora said she wants to see more change happening from within the industry.

“This is the next big challenge for the hospitality industry … The first priority is that people feel safe. It requires effort [to change], but it’s so worth it, too. I firmly believe we can change things and it has to come from the industry.”

Noora said that there has been a “very intentional” approach to building a positive workplace culture at Pilot and Such and Such.

In the future, Noora hopes to bring more flavours of her home to customers in Canberra. She recently did a pop-up event at Such and Such where she drew on her Finnish heritage.

“The palate is so different back home, so I didn’t want to just serve up salted herring, rye bread and licorice because these things can be a bit of an acquired taste! So I wanted to take those dishes from the Finnish context and put them in an Australian context.”

“People want to see something new and exciting. It makes my little Finnish heart happy to feel like there is a market for it here.”

Follow Pilot on Instagram. Visit the Good Food for more details on the awards.