Following our continuing coverage of McCrady’s Chef Sean Brock’s participation in tonight’s new episode of Food Network Challenge, I am excited to announce to all of you who missed it that the hometown boy beat out three very worthy competitors and brought the title of “The Next Great Chef” home to Charleston!
In what was an extremely stressful competition by all accounts, Brock won the appetizer round with a shrimp carpaccio that he made with local Charleston shrimp, and then held on in the entree round making a seared Hawaiian tuna dish that incorporated greens from McCrady’s farm on Wadamalaw Island.
Although the judges repeatedly questioned Brock’s use of technology in his cooking (I’m trying to refrain from using “molecular gastronomy” after hearing both Brock and Richard Blais express their distaste for the term), they were brought around by the finished product. In what must be seen as an odd statement for anyone who knows anything about Brock, one of the judges, Chef John Besh of New Orleans, claimed that both of Chef Brock’s dishes lacked “soul.” Brock, who compared the comments to “50 punches in the gut,” had a response that’s difficult to argue with: he spends his mornings in the fields of his farm, on his hands and knees, planting the food that he cooked for the competition; what could be more soulful than that?
Regardless, the judges reservations about his techniques obviously didn’t hold much weight because they still awarded him the big prize: $10,000 and a title that is going to make his resume pretty tough to match. I thought this victory was particularly impressive because Brock beat out competitors from three of the United States most celebrated culinary Meccas: New York City, San Francisco, and New Orleans.
So, congratulations to Chef Brock, this is just the most recent in a long line of accomplishments that are really solidifying Charleston as one of the culinary destinations.
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