TV's hottest food fight, Top Chef, doffs its toque to Music City's Iron Fork
Top Chef, Meet Iron Fork
by Sean L. Maloney
- Richard Sweeney
Uh-oh. The same day the premier local food competition is going down — Wednesday, April 20 — one of TV's best-known food competitions comes through town. Ironic, huh? But what looked initially like a face-off has turned into a tag team. Not only will lovers of culinary showdowns be able to catch both the Top Chef and Iron Fork events, they'll see contending chefs and participants from both appear at each other's events.
When the Top Chef Tour rolls into the Nashville Farmers' Market that morning, it'll look like the OK Corral up in that mobile kitchen. For Nashville, the tour selected Season 5 "chef-testant" Richard Sweeney — owner and executive chef of San Diego's R Gang Eatery — and one of Season 3's scene-stealers, chef Casey Thompson.
"For the tour we totally changed up the format this year," says Sweeney by phone from San Diego. "Last year was cooking demos, and now we've changed it up so it's going to be a Quickfire competition where the other chef and I are going head to head."
Nashville gourmands can help choose the Quickfire ingredients via the Top Chef Tour Facebook page. They can also enter to be a member of the esteemed judging panel charged with the arduous task of eating excellent food. (For more details, see www.nashvillescene.com and the Scene's food blog Bites.)
"There's a lot of surprise because we're walking into this a little bit blind," Sweeney says. "But for the most part, the fans are going to have a big influence on how the tour will go. It's going to be really interesting to see what Nashville wants us to cook with."
Among the local judges will be Flyte Chef Ashley Quick, who'll be competing that night in the Scene-sponsored Iron Fork at the Country Music Hall of Fame. He'll share the center of attention with fellow chefs Matt Bolus (Watermark), Charles Phillips (1808 Grille), John Stephenson (Fido), and Laura Wilson (The Turnip Truck Urban Fare). And the Top Fork festivities are more than just a good time for the locals — Chef Sweeney sounds stoked about checking out Iron Fork.
"Instead of showing up and running around and trying to get to as many of these little places as I can, it's really cool that the timing is really good and I get to go to [Iron Fork] that night, check out some fun stuff and really see what Nashville's got to offer," Sweeney says.
The Top Chef Tour will be at the Nashville Farmers' Market from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., free. Iron Fork is at the Country Music Hall of Fame from 6 to 10 p.m., and the $40 admission (which benefits the Martha O'Bryan Center) includes three drink tickets and samplings from more than 20 local restaurants.
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