Food Critic

Everyone is a food critic! I think it must be a genetic thing left over from our cave dwelling days when around the campfire we discussed vegetables versus meat or steak tartar versus venison stew. Perhaps we talked about other caves and who prepared the better soup or fruit compote.

I recently had such a chance to be a food critic. Sit around a wonderfully-lit grotto with about eighty fellow critics, imbibe great wines, and openly critique each dish of a six-course meal when they came out of the kitchen. We were at the “Fire on the Rock” Chef’s Challenge (www.fireontherock.com) at Crippen’s Restaurant in Blowing Rock (www.crippens.com), part of the upcoming Blue Ridge Wine Festival.
(www.blueridgewinefestival.com)

The evening’s two competing chefs had arrived earlier that day and began prepping dishes without prior planning or recipes or the chance to select the ingredients or prepare their signature dishes. This was a straightforward challenge, using what was in the pantry and directly competing against someone you may have worked with in another kitchen before!

As each dish emerged from the kitchen, we rated the food based on appearance, smell, taste, and the incorporation of a secret ingredient that the chefs did not know about until they stepped into the kitchen. Best of all, you did not know which chef prepared which dish!

The tableside conversations about presentation, smell, taste and whether you could taste the secret ingredient filled the room, overpowering the announcements of what the dishes consisted of, to the point that the well-known restaurant owner, Jimmy Crippen had to read aloud the ingredients at each table.

This is fun! The great food, conversations with newly-acquired friends, the wine, and the time slipped by as we judged, totaled our scores, and awaited the final tally and presentations of the chefs and their teams. Finally, over coffee and flaming brandy, the time had arrived for our critical analysis to be confirmed or denied, how did we fare as food critics, did we agree or disagree with others, and which chef prepared which dish?

With over 20 chefs competing in this challenge in February and March, you have a chance to join in as a food critic and if you can make it to the festival, you will get to see the final four chefs competing in a one-hour “Iron Chef” competition to determining who takes the title of “Fire on The Rock Iron Chef”.

I will let you go to the website (www.fireontherock.com) to see who won this challenge because they are all great chefs, competing for a great cause and allowing all of us to be the food critics that deep down, we just cannot keep ourselves from being!