Capital Cooking with Lauren DeSantis: Brainfood Grill-Off

Me and Karen Sippel

Last night we checked out the outdoor grilling competition and fundraiser features teams of local chefs, amateur cooks and Brainfood program graduates.

Teams drew their proteins from a mason jar, including lamb chops, shrimp, sausage, chicken, flank steak and cod.

They got to select fresh veggies, herbs, seasonings, etc. from the pantry table.

Chefs included:

Daniel Giusti, 1789

Kyle Bailey, Birch & Barley

Kevin Villalovos, Cure

Dean Gold, Dino

Teddy Folkman, Granville Moore’s and Shannon Overmiller, The Majestic

Glenn Babcock, Nage

Bryan Moscatello, Zola and Potenza.

Daniel Giusti and Shannon Overmiller were both guests on the Capital Cooking Show and featured in the Capital Cooking Cookbook. We had fun catching up.

We caught up with Andrew Stover and tried some of his Shindig wine at the wine tasting table with about ten selections to choose from.

Grilling...

Judging...

They had about an hour to prepare not only a dish for judging by White House Sous Chef Tafari Campbell, Metrocurean's Amanda McClements and Ridgewell's Susan Lacz Neimann, but also enough small bites to feed the crowd of over 200 guests in order to win the people's choice, the Brainfoodie Choice Award.
After tasting and giving a preview for the audience of what they thought, the judges scored all of the dishes and discussed their decisions before announcing the winners.
The Brainfoodie Choice Award was determined based on the number of votes that each team received from the guests - each guest received a ticket when they arrived and they could drop it into a mason jar on each team's table to vote.