Local Chef’s battle head-to-head in third annual Long Walk Farm Battle of the Chefs
COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa —
Omaha is a city that some locals claim has the most restaurants per capita in the United States. One local farm, for the third year in a row, is on its journey to find the city’s best team of chefs.
Sunday night, two teams of local chefs competed in the semifinals in Long Walk Farm’s annual Battle of the Chefs.
Some of the money from the ticket sales goes to children with disabilities, while nearly all the food the chefs use in the cook-off is locally sourced.
One team of chefs competing Sunday night was from MealBox, the other from House of Bah One.
“We call it culturally affirming cuisine. That’s why we think Omaha has a lot of food place, but we need food that bring people together.>
That’s a gateway we call it culturally affirming cuisine. That’s why we think the Omaha has lots of food place’s, but we need food that bring people together,” Chef Djamil Bah-Traore from House of Bah One said.
Bah-Traore says he cooks through love and affection.
“I have not seen anything like, remotely like this in the Midwest,” Dan Hoppen, a local restaurant podcaster, said.
The competition is bracket-style; they start with eight chefs, and each round one is eliminated until you get to the finals and a winner is declared.
Chef Will Brige from MealBox has competed for the past three years. Brige said he won the cook-off his first year competing.
But for Bah-Traore, this is his first year competing. He said he’s excited to surprise everyone with his unique flavors.
“I’m from West Africa. I tell Togo. For what we do, we call it culture. For me, cuisine we have to see in a lot. So we bring the world to people in the Midwest through food,” Bah-Traore said.
Each team received half a hog that they had to use to create two dishes, one appetizer and one entrée.
“Tonight we’re doing New Orleans boudin… The second dish is going to be a pulled pork sandwich again, right there. The flavor is going to be different,” Bah Traore said.
“We did a smoked sausage with, with a really nice serrano cornbread and hot honey butter… We did a red pepper ravioli,” Birge said.
They also included two secret ingredients, the Serrano pepper and the red sweet Italian peppers.
The factor that Long Walk Farm finds most important is that almost all the ingredients the chefs used are locally sourced.
“They either get it through us or other local farms is completely fine with us. and it’s it’s always unique. Whatever you eat here, you’re probably not going to get on a menu somewhere,” Matt Johnson, one of the co-owners of Long Walk Farm, said.
People attending the competition get a closer look at how local restaurants and producers work together, and they were glad to support local businesses.
“What we do is really cool. The local economy we’ve created, you know, helping each other out and kind of growing together,” Birge said.
In the end, MealBox took home tonight’s win and will advance to the finals on October 18. Tickets for the final cook-off are still available, and you can find them on longwalkfarm.com.
Make sure you can always see the latest news, weather, sports and more from KETV NewsWatch 7 on Google search.
NAVIGATE: Home | Weather | Local News | National | Sports | Newscasts on demand |
