Big Jones Chef Paul Fehribach Wins Cook-Off At South Carolina Food Festival
By Amy Cavanaugh in Food on Sep 30, 2012 6:00PM
We're huge fans of what Paul Fehribach is doing at Big Jones, his Southern restaurant in Andersonville, so we were excited to find out that he would be competing at a cook-off during Euphoria, a four-day Southern food festival held annually in Greenville, South Carolina. We were invited to Euphoria to eat and drink (and eat and eat), and made sure to grab a front-row seat during Fehribach's competition last Sunday.
Chefs were divided into teams of two—Fehribach and New York chef Carmen Quagliata faced off against Charleston chef Craig Deihl and Atlanta chef Daryl Shular—and each team was tasked with creating two dishes. In past years, chefs received a box of mystery ingredients, but this year, they opened the box to find a card instructing them to make a gluten-free dish. They had five minutes to plan and 30 minutes to cook, before presenting a finished dish to three judges selected out of the audience.
D.C.'s David Guas, who turns out some of our favorite desserts in the D.C.-area, hosted the event and kept the chefs moving as they chopped, sliced, and grilled. The 30-minute time limit came quickly, but all four dishes looked amazing.
Fehribach made benne-crusted lamb chops with pistachio and date fried rice and a tasting of seasonal vegetables that included squash and mushrooms. Quagliata made spicy grilled shrimp with fried okra and green beans, Deihl made lamb and feta-stuffed dates, and Shular made grilled figs and vegetables.
The judges deemed Fehribach and Quagliata's dishes the winners, and we're hoping that inspires Fehribach to put his dish on the menu at Big Jones.