Chef Hal Holden-Bache shows off his Miyakis
Music City descended on Sin City for the World Food Championships in downtown Las Vegas, and the Nashville contingent definitely made some waves in the competitions. Last month,
I told you about the long list of locals who had qualified, but I missed a few. Ashley Jent, the pastry chef from
Mason's, earned her Golden Ticket as the winner of the Scene's Sugar Rush event. Jent partnered with
Nashville Jam Companyto produce the winning dish.
In Vegas, Jent made two desserts in competition using a full Kenmore kitchen set up positioned right in the middle of the street of the Fremont Street Experience. Tough conditions for any chef, but Jent performed admirably, finishing in the top 30, just a few spots behind fellow Nashvillian Melissa Corbin in the same category.
I should have known Jent was competing, especially considering Lesley had already written about it, but another Nashville competitor came as a total surprise to me. I ran into chef Dan Maggipinto from Caffe Nonna at the opening cocktail reception. I'm already a big fan of Chef Dan, so I was quite pleased to discover that he was a late entrant into the Pasta category at the WFC.
After the first round of cooking, Maggipinto found himself in fifth place overall, but the eventual winner was a pasta buzzsaw. Suzanne Clark is a professional competitive cook with loads of sponsorships, so it was no surprise when she ended up winning the category by a wide margin. Maggipinto's second-round offering was apparently not as well-received by the judges as he finished just outside of the Top 10 in 12th. (There's no accounting for taste, I guess.)
Two Nashville chefs did finish in the Top 10 of their respective competitions, earning the chance to move on to the final round for a chance to win $10,000. Winners of the Top 10 rounds also moved on to the Final Table to compete against the other categories for $100,000. If you ate at Burger Republic last weekend, I hope you had a good experience, because they brought what looked like their whole staff with them to Vegas to compete in the Burger category.
This A-Team of burger chefs was worth all the plane fares, because they found themselves sitting in first place going into the Top 10 round. One if the elements of the preliminaries was to create a new burger using the ingredients list from the major sponsor, Red Robin. Burger Republic repurposed Red Robin patties by mixing in blue cheese and converted their wide steak fries into crispy fried juliennes to create a Steak Frites Burger that won that particular round by a whopping seven points!
Cooking in the finals, the Burger Republic team tried a risky Hawaiian Spam Burger that must have baffled the judges, since they ended up finishing in fifth place. That's still a fantastic showing up against a bunch of the best burgermeisters in the country.
The most successful chef from Nashville was probably the man who currently holds the title of Nashville Scene Iron Fork champion, chef Hal Holden-Bache of Lockeland Table. Chef Hal took the honor of carrying the Scene's proud standard quite seriously and actually competed in two categories at the World Food Championships.
His win at Iron Fork qualified him to compete in the Recipe category, and he was also invited to compete in the prestigious Chefs' Challenge competition for a chance to win a $15,000 smoker from Tennessee-based Southern Pride. The Recipe competition was based around the ingredient of cheese, and Holden-Bache and sous chef Danny Bua placed well in the preliminaries, earning a spot in the Top 10. With consistent scores, the team was in eighth place going into the finals. Eventually, they managed to move up a spot in the final round, but finished just out of the money.
In between rounds of the Recipe bouts, Holden-Bache cooked in the Chefs' Challenge on Friday and Sunday. Dominating in the first round, Chef Hal cooked his "signature dish" of New York strip with chimichurri sauce, and another winning plate featuring a mystery basket of potatoes and halibut. There was also a knife skills challenge requiring the chefs to julienne and tournée potatoes and dice onions under time pressure. Holden-Bache's past experience working in kitchens like the Capitol Grille and the Greenbrier served him in good stead as he blew through those exercises with ease.
For winning his preliminary round, Holden-Bache won $1,000 and the chance to cook off against two other chefs in the finals for the smoker. It was another signature dish challenge, and Hal went with the strip steak again. This truly is the dish he's know for, and has been on the menu at every restaurant he has worked at for 15 years. He even has a promise from his business partners that if anything ever happens to him, that dish must stay on the Lockeland Table menu.
But in the end, a panel of judges that included stickler Simon Majumdar chose the other two chefs' flashier dishes over Hal's earnest and delicious steak, although they did say they thought it was excellent. While Hal ended up in third place, he acquitted himself and Nashville very well. His Top 10 finish in Recipes automatically qualifies him to return to compete in next year's World Food Championships, which will be moving to Kissimee, Fla. Burger Republic is also eligible for a return visit next year, and we figure our local chefs will take advantage of their experiences to do even better in 2015!
