Friday, July 20, 2007

Iron Chef Central Coast

At lunch today I ran across an recent issue of Central Coast Magazine where they did a quasi-Iron Chef like challenge with a bunch of local gourmet chefs.

The rules were simple. Each chef was asked to prepare four dishes using a secret ingredient: one appetizer, one main dish, one dessert, and one wild card dish of their choosing. The secret ingredient was the same for all chefs, is readily available, and gave each chef great creative opportunities, leaving a lot of room for interpretation.

Chefs were required to use one blue-veined, one soft ripened, one hard ripened, and one other cheese of their choice. There were no restrictions on which type should be used for which dish.
The winner was “Bill” Hoppe of Hoppe’s Garden Bistro in Cayucos, CA with the following menu:
I think about thirty chefs participated overall and there about half a dozen runner ups highlighted in the article (which can be found online in entirety at the first link above).

Looks like I'll have to add some of these restaurants to my "To Eat At" list. Good eats here I come!

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