Hot Chefs
Latitudes Cafe
Chef Battle
8 area chefs, 8 secret main ingredients & a 3 hour time limit from prep to plate showdown.
To see the video click on the Latitudes Link Above
You’ve all seen it on TV, by now you surely know the drill. Take several up and coming chefs, a few surprise ingredients, a tight time limit and watch what happens. Usually what happens (at least on Food networks’s Top Chef) is a few fall behind, a few fall apart, a couple keep it on track and one comes out on top.
The Chef Battle contest latitudes Cafe hosted had all the flavor of a TV Top Chef contest and not even an aftertaste of the TV drama. It was real, it was live and after plating for the judges these chefs went on to plate a hundred more or so for the eastside audience. Top that Top Chef.
The recipe was simple Chef Dan Starkins (Latitude Anderson) took his top notch team and paired them off with chefs from Cumin (Yajan Upadhyaya & Mick Walker) and a couple guest assistants who were up for the challenge into four teams of two. Next, one of four meats were drawn by lottery for each team (duck, pork shoulder, rib eye and Opa fish). The meats were accompanied by a vegetable drawing and a final $25 Kroger card.
Now the chefs needed to create a dish incorporating the drawn ingredients and whatever their imagination could muster on $25. Trick is they only had 3 hours from the drawing to plate up their finished dish for judging as well as serve a hundred or so to the live audience eagerly awaiting their fair share.
Judges; Chris Hamm, Rob Williams, and Shawn Boland carefully noted each dish’s best qualities in flavor, texture, originality, presentation and execution until one dish stood slightly above the rest.
Chef Dan and teammate chef Yajan took the top spot with their “Duck ravioli in beet pasta with a roasted pepper reduction sauce”. The other 3 dishes were grand enough to grace the plates of any Cincinnati fine dining establishment and were enjoyed by all.
The audience also had a ballot box and the top spot from them went to Chef Alex Clements and Jordan Newberry with their grilled Opa on crisps with pomegranate reduction sauce. All four dishes were someone’s favorite and the scores were really close. If you missed out watch for the next one. If you dig it on TV you’ll be hooked on the real deal. Just think, it’s just like TV “Top Chef” except it’s you that gets to eat it!.
