Worcester's Best Chef 2012, part 2

My last post covered Worcester's Best Chef competition. This is the rest of the story :)

The event was packed; this is 1/2 of one floor of Mechanic's Hall. Food was available on two floors.

WXLO emceed the event and kept things interesting. All votes were to be cast by 6 pm so they could be tallied for the People's Choice Award. That time got pushed to 6:30. Instead, at 6:15 or so, WXLO awarded a trophy to their pick for the best chef. The selected Chef Chris Rovezzi for his excellent tortelloni.

In addition to the people's choice and WXLO awards, there were 7 chef judges who picked the official top three chefs. The top three chefs would then have a head-to-head competition that lasted 30 minutes -- an Iron Chef, if you will. 6:30 marked the announcement of the judges' top 3: Chris Rovezzi (Rovezzi's), Wilson Wang (Baba Sushi) and Dan O'Sullivan (Sonoma). They were invited onstage to speak briefly about their dishes. The cook-off was to start at 7 pm.


The Iron Chef portion finally commenced around 7:15. Each chef was given a mystery box that contained pompano (fish), sweet soy sauce, fennel and something else I didn't catch. Chef's got 30 minutes to use their mystery items along with anything in the pantry to compose a dish.

Wilson Wang (left), Chris Rovezzi (center), Dan O'Sullivan (right) preparing their dishes

Chef Wang starting to plate

Chef Rovezzi's dish

Chef O'Sullivan's dish (sorry about the focus), judges in background

The People's choice awards were presented around 7:45 as the judges conferred on the overall winner. The winners were Wilson Wang (Baba Sushi), Bill Nemeroff (Ceres) and Chris Rovezzi (Rovezzi's).  Chris Rovezzi got a lot of stage time on Sunday :)

Finally, the overall winner of the competition was announced around 8. Drumroll.... The award went to Chris Rovezzi. Unfortunately, the final dishes were not described, nor were the observations of the judges about each dish. I'm crossing my fingers that this will be a part of next year's event, since the organizer seemed to suggest it would be after I emailed him my suggestion this morning.

For more information about WBC, be sure to visit their website and Facebook page (including lots of photos). We had fun! Come join us next year!