Chicago or Bust, a Culinary Adventure for Chefs from Around the Country!

They did it! Congratulations to the four Sears Chef Challenge Round Two Winners!
Four fabulous chefs, Alex Dino (N.YC.), Tiffany Friedman (S.F.), Lovely Jackson (Chicago) and John Murphy (D.C.) all made it to the semi-finals and are all set to face of in our Iron Chef-stlyle cook off Thursday evening to see who will win a chance to compete against round one winner Chef Mark Maassen of Chicago on November 4th for the title of Sears Chef Challenge Grand Champion! Each chef won $5,000 for their chosen charity and an appliance of their choice. Thursday’s winner wins ANOTHER $5,000 for their charity and another appliance. The Grand Champion wins another $10,000 for charity and a full kitchen makeover. Stakes are high, knives are sharpened…

Loading in the car on the way to Whole Foods

Sears’ Chef, Billy Parisi and I worked all day with the dynamic SCC team to meet, greet, trick and treat our chef-testants. Chefs met this morning for the first time at the Felix Hotel and got a hint at the upcoming challenges. We then whisked them away to Whole Foods Market.

This is a very, very diverse and raucous group. Alex is calm and cool, a very seasoned, disciplined chef and new cook book author modern-tofu.com; Tiffany is a top tier private chef to the stars with years of restaurant experience, full of humorous energy; Lovely is a culinary media master, charming the camera at every chance and a top culinary educator tweeting as she goes, and our youngest chef John is a soulful newlywed with a passion and talent beyond his years who works as a chef at a brilliant non-profit feeding REAL food to the homeless. What an incredible array of talent and experience, but who will prevail? Check out their videos at www.searschefchallenge.com.

the challenge is revealed

At Whole Foods Market, we revealed their challenge. Each chef uncovered a hidden mystery ingredient, which they all had to incorporate into their final dishes. They chose brussels sprouts, nutmeg, acorn squash and granny smith apples. How would you incorporate those into one dish?
Shopping was just 30 minutes; here is Alex, always chill, checking out.

Chef Alex, always chill

Tiff, was over by $20 and was bargaining with John to buy her butter, hysterical! Lovely was at $98.89, and the budget was $100, wow!
We all jammed into the elevator with the camera crew to the upstairs cooking school for one hour of prep.

We all jammed into the elevator with the camera crew

Me, I had dish duty, which is fine with me.


What a scene!



Here are the chefs loading their coolers into the car for transport to the Kenmore Live Studio for the battle.

Chefs loading their coolers to transport them to Kenmore Live Studio

BE SURE AND WATCH LIVE STREAM

• Thursday October 23rd at
• www.searschefchallenge.com 
• 7:00 pm Central time
• 5:00 Pacific time
• 8:00 pm Eastern time