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Maybe it was Anthony Bourdain, Bobby Flay or Rachael Ray. Or possibly it began with the Galloping Gourmet, the Frugal Gourmet, the Naked Chef or the Iron Chef. Nevertheless, long before Miami Beach held its first food competition, interest in celebrity chefs and their creations was cooking on all four burners.
The 11th Annual South Beach Seafood Festival’s Saturday beachfront festival on October 21nd spans four blocks and welcomes more than 15,000 (sea)foodies each year, bringing together South Florida seafood chefs to create handcrafted seafood dishes that you won’t find anywhere else.
Friday night’s VIP Chef Showdown is something seriously special. It features executive chefs in an evening of competitive culinary cook-offs, where guests are the judges; after eating, you drop a wooden nickel into the jar of your choice. Entry tickets provide the all-you-can-eat small plate experience. Drinks are also included in the entry package. $160 will get you in as a VIP, but you need to book in advance because only 1000 tickets are available, so they say.
In a combination of competition, cocktails and entertainment, the Chef Showdown tours guests through the seas of Miami’s culinary scene; 23 chefs go head-to-head in 11 unique seafood showdowns on stage, but before this, they host side by side pavilions where guests sip, sample and VOTE on their favorites. Nobody is getting out of this event hungry.
Boomers will tell you that they remember a time before fast food franchises appeared, when coffee was solely a pre-Starbucks bottomless cup poured by a waitress, and bread came from bakeries, not soft like marshmallows wrapped in plastic. People went out to eat, but not like we do today.
There were cooking icons though, like James Beard and Julia Child. PBS featured Martin Yan, Graham Kerr, Jacques Pepin and Jeff Smith. Then came a Food Network with Emeril LaGasse, Mario Batali, Alton Brown, Jamie Oliver and Paula Deen, followed by Morimoto, Ramsey, Fieri and various showdowns, throwdowns, get downs, chowdowns, man downs and hand downs. The number of shows and competitions is not your old chili cookoff. Now Stanley Tucci, John Leguizamo, Jose Andres and others participate in stacks of cable programs, YouTube, Insta, TikTok and Facebook videos granting anybody able to conjure hunger a kind of two bite celebrity status.
Locally, Zak the Baker, Chef Reuben from the Airport Cafe and Harry from the Empanada and BBQ spot have mouthwatering media presence. Before that, there was the emergence of the food truck gatherings and farmer’s market stands where aspiring chefs could lower their overhead by rolling in on a set of wheels. Several of them went mainstream, like Zak, Ms. Cheezious, Babe Froman, Fireman Derek, Miami Roasted Corn (now Elote Lovers) and Thank You Miami.
What is remarkable is how utterly delicious these small spots can be, and how cluelessly so many people eat despite the local possibilities. That said, there’s gonna be a showdown on the Beach where a few dozen of our best chefs will show their skills in an event worth every bite.
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