Smokin' Iron Chef Competition -Suncoast BBQ & Bluegrass Bash

Woohoo!

I'm Chef Dennis Littley and we are here live at the Smokin' Iron Chef competition at the Suncoast Barbecue and Bluegrass Bash. And I was amazed I could say that without forgetting one part of it.

That was awesome.

And I'm here with Laura Raymond from Destination Cuisine, and Laura was one of the judges and she is the one who organized this amazing event.

And oh my God, oh, wasn't it crazy?

Wow, I got tired watching them. Plus, you know, I was, I was so excited and into it, I was taking pictures. I go, boy, oh my God, I got— I must have like 300 pictures. I'm thinking, what am I going to do for my blog? It's going to be one huge pictorial. I could probably do 2 or 3.

There was some beautiful food for sure.

Wow. Yeah, I did post some pictures in our comment stream. And guys, I don't have the comment tracker up, you know, we're This is— again, I'm happy I have signal. I have, I have a new, I have a new hotspot so I can actually get some internet connection. And we're trying to find enough light to do this from. And it is— was a beautiful day. The breeze kept us nicely aerated because otherwise it'd have been hot.

It's usually pretty hot this time of year.

Yeah. And Joe Arvin is up and around somewhere, and he did a great job with it. And Larry Oliphant was here for the World Food Championships. And right now we have a gentleman here who was one of the teams that just barely, barely came in second. Oh my God, it was a close one. But he's got to get back to the restaurant to work because he's a chef. So we're going to bring him in right now and say hi to him and talk about his food.

So, and, um, can we introduce Brian?

Absolutely, come on in.

And actually, the whole, the whole team, you guys can stay behind us if you want.

If one of you wants to sit, the rest of you just come on behind. Yeah, they come on behind us. And Brian, that was amazing.

Thank you.

I cannot— Laura wanted me to compete and I'm like, no way, I'm too old for that. I remember what it was like. And you guys had such composure and you were so good under this pressure. I wish I'd seen you last night without light. Yeah, but I saw there was no light. I tried to take a picture and I went, I might as well go back to the hotel because that must have been pretty cool. Yeah, it was tough. That was a real chef challenge. They took away your light. It was, yeah. But you guys really did a great job. You know, I wish I could come over for dinner tonight for the restaurant, but I'm still on this crazy diet and I can't even eat any of this. But I wanted to show everybody what you prepared. But I want to show a couple of your dish— I want to show one of your dishes which was my favorite, and I want to see if you can tell me a little bit about this. So we have grilled pork loin. I did a bacon vinaigrette, and then I took the eggs and Romanesco and made kind of a bouillon underneath. We actually were going to use the eggs in the dessert, and it didn't work out on the grill so well, so it was kind of a last-minute thing to utilize the eggs. So I just kind of whipped it in with the vegetables underneath, and then pickled mushrooms on top. That was brilliant. Thank you.

That really was brilliant. Insane, the flavor combinations and the way you layered Flavors. I just, I couldn't believe it. And, you know, just to set the backdrop a little bit, um, there were 8 chefs competing last night. The final 2, final face-off was today. And so the best of the best competed, and they had to make an appetizer, an entrée, and a dessert, and all within 1 hour. And they had to make sure to hit the turn-in times or basically get points off. Everybody hit their turn-in times. I was really pleased about that. So So, but the surprise ingredients today were pretty incredible. We gave them fresh horseradish, which was, I think, the biggest surprise for everybody. Would you agree?

Yeah.

Yeah, that was— I knew that would be a challenge. We gave them whole wheat English muffins, which were really challenging too. And the idea being that they had to incorporate these mystery items into any— they could do it one of the dishes or all three. And what they actually did with them was just incredible. Now, what did you end up doing with the horseradish?

I grated it and put it into the cherry pepper marmalade with the appetizer.

Okay, yeah, that was— get that dish.

That is this dish.

Oh, nice. And that was the shrimp?

Yeah, I actually smoked the shrimp and then chopped them up, put it on top of the marmalade.

So there was, there was a marmalade under that? You couldn't even see it? That, that must have been Amazing. I mean, the flavor— again, flavor profiles are just so cool. And you guys, you said you just boom, you know, and I was waiting. I knew he had coconuts and I'm going, oh wait, they're gonna freak out when they see they got fresh coconuts. And you, you went, yeah, like you, you were happy. Yeah, coconuts. I saw you like, yes, oh my God, they really know.

Well, of course, I was actually more happy because she can use them.

There you go, there you go. And I loved watching you cut I wish I'd had that on video because you were, you were like a serial killer in training. Why don't you introduce the other, the rest of your guys here? Nick Carter. Nick Carter. Hi, Nick. And what was the name?

Adila.

Adila.

Very good. Abby. So you guys rocked. Um, sure did. I, I can only imagine how you perform in the kitchen. I mean, I know being a former chef, I know how important it is to have people with you that you can depend on, that you think like you do, you can anticipate what you're doing. So you're a very lucky man.

Thank you.

And it sounds like your owner is very happy with you too. Yeah, it was fun to be here.

Thanks.

Yeah, and just so everybody knows, uh, these guys only lost by 2 points. It was so close. And you know, with this, with the surprise ingredients, um, you know, there's literally no time to think about almost about what you're going to do with them. You've got to really be on your, you know, Johnny on the spot. What are we gonna do? Because the clock is ticking every second, literally. So, you know, you've got to figure it out pretty darn quick.

And just so you know, they had to do all this on a barbecue grill without any pans. They were using aluminum foil half pans to cook in. That was it. So that, that in itself is, you know, pretty crazy.

That's pretty cool.

And that's when you know a chef really knows what he's doing. You know, people always say I have a flat-top range. Oh, why do you have that? I said I cook on rocks. I don't want to hear it. You know, so you guys proved it today. You really shown and did an amazing job with your stuff.

Sure did. Rise to the challenge for sure. So it's Marker 4.

Marker 4 Restaurant. And that is where? Uh, Venice. Uh, North Venice on the Fisherman's Marina. North Venice on the Fisherman's Marina. And I will definitely be back to Venice. Unfortunately, my wife is in Philadelphia visiting her mother, so we just got married, and she wants to show her her dress. But, uh, or she would be with me and we would probably be out eating. I could say to hell with my diet, but without her, if I go off of it, I'm in trouble. So we'll have to come back and visit you. Well, great to meet you. Very nice.

Great job, guys.

I love your tats too.

Thank you for the competition.

That was great.

I had a blast.

Thank you so much.

Thanks so much.

Very nice to meet you.

Have a good one.

I'll see you soon.

Wow, that— they, they were really good. And you know, I'm so impressed with how at ease they are.

This is their space. Yeah, most definitely, you know.

And I wish we— I put a picture of the dessert up because the dessert was— wow, they made a blackberry, like a blackberry coulis, and they had a mint and coconut crème fraîche.

That was— the flavors were insane. The bananas look so good, and they, uh, they grilled the bananas.

Yes.

And, uh, just the caramelization that they got and the little crunch on top.

Well, I saw how she was prepping the banana. She actually split them with the skin on and loaded them up inside and then put them on the grill to bake in the skin. Really? Then I guess— I don't know if they put them on the grill again, right? But I'm watching her going, what's she doing? And I went, oh my gosh, she's gonna roast the bananas seasoned in the skin!

And I'm thinking, I'd have never thought of that.

We actually, um, if you could— even, even though this is the competitions, I want to show what size of the banana, because we We went shopping, and the whole idea behind this was to do absolute fresh ingredients. We got, you know, it was a spear-caught grouper, um, you know, fresh, uh, Gulf shrimp yesterday and today. Um, and we have actually some beautiful—

here's the shrimp that they made that, um, the other restaurant, um, Sharky's Spins.

Spins at Sharky's. Yep. They were the winners. Uh, hopefully they'll be here soon, uh, because they, they also did an amazing job. And these two restaurants, these, these are two standout chefs in Venice for sure.

Yeah, it's— this is a food mecca. I was walking the Midman, I'm thinking, oh my God, I have never seen so much amazing food in one place.

Yeah, we're serious about it.

There was a guy from Georgia and he had laid out all of his barbecue this wearing all of his smoked meats. And I, I was just like, oh my God, I wanted to start at one end. He had turkey legs, he had these dinosaur ribs, he had racks of ribs, he had chicken. And, and everywhere you went— and then I walked behind the scenes where the workers and their families were smoking stuff and cooking and eating, you know, just because they're here for a couple days. So they're, they're camped out. There's campers, there's campers and all kinds of things here. So It's, it's really phenomenal. There's a lot of vendors here.

Yeah, we were expecting 15,000 this year, and I think we were pretty darn, pretty darn close.

Well, you know, they— I, I know I was warned about the bottlenecks and all the problems getting in, and it didn't seem like it this year.

Yeah, we opened up another lane this year, so that made a huge difference with the traffic and getting everybody in and right to the barbecue and right to the food.

And you had a lot of help. There were, there were people all over the place, volunteers helping getting situated. One guy in a tram wanted to drive me. I mean, I was like 20 feet away because— I'll drive you in. I'm like, no, I'm all right for that. Hey, Chef, come on in.

Yeah, do you want to also introduce Larry?

Sure. Hey, we'll be right with you, Chef. Oh yeah, and this is Larry Oliphant from the World Food Championship.

That's right.

And what an amazing event. This was a qualifier.

It was a 3-way qualifier, one of only maybe one in the world where we had a barbecue qualifier, a chili qualifier, and a chef qualifier all in the same place. What a great event.

Wow. I would have liked to see some of the other ones too. I know I walked down the chili area earlier this morning because I didn't know what was going on. I said, everybody's got chili. This must be the chili cook-off. Didn't I?

No, I'm real quick like that. I'm gonna rewrite the script. It's not the Merchant of Venice. Yeah, it's the Cook of Venice, because we're in Venice, Florida. It's incredible. The talent here may be the best in, uh, the best in the country.

Could be.

It is amazing. I mean, there were so many talented people representing the area, not just in the competition here, but I mean, I'm sure the other ones as well. And there was a bake-off as well.

There's a bake-off. We have World Barbecue Champions here. Sweet Smoke Q won the World Barbecue Champion. We've got a gal from Venice, Florida that won the World Side Dish Championship in 2012 in Las Vegas from Venice, Florida.

You want to bring her over?

Let's introduce Linda Bonwell. She's going to come over in a moment. It's incredible. I mean, this, this place is packed with winners. It is. Venice is for winners where other places are for lovers. Virginia's for lovers, Dennis's for winners.

Dennis's for winners. Well, you know, I had a slogan when I was in Philly. They said New York was a city that never sleeps, Philly was the city that always eats, because we were also one of the fattest cities in the country.

This is a city that cooks. Yes, this city cooks.

Absolutely.

It rocks.

Bring up a chair, sweetie. Come on, let's grab a seat.

Yeah, grab a chair.

But really, for this event to go on in the middle of the most beautiful place in the world, right?

Sarasota, Florida. Oh my gosh.

Right?

It may be known for resorts and spas. How about cooks?

Nice cooks. You know, food is an important part of travel.

Linda Bonwell, I mean, 2012 World Side Dish Champion. We retired it. We stopped the whole category after that. It was over.

What was your side dish?

My side dish that won me top 10 was my regular potato salad that I've made for years, but I garnished it with a Cobb topping. So it's the bacon, the turkey, avocado, the blue cheese.

If I wasn't already married—

uh, so she was in the— so the finals that year was at the courtyard of Caesar's Palace. A stadium was erected, literally 500-seat stadium, state-of-the-art. We had Tim Love, Adam Richman, Ben Vaughn. We had us Robin Leach, who's who. We had Robin Leach. Robin Leach scared me.

Oh my God, he is a little frightened.

Yeah, I'm so scared. Now this year we had Louie Anderson, but we had that crowd. They argued over these decisions. Linda Von Roll from Venice, right? Inglewood, right? Of all places, in the Caesars Palace, she slayed him.

She—

I thought she was whining out with Kurt Douglas. It was crazy. It was nutty.

The only home cook at the final table of the competition, and the only woman.

Congratulations for that. They retired your jersey at that point.

We stopped it. We stopped the whole category. We moved into fresh, which is what we did here. Low spices, no oils, fresh seasonings, fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, as opposed to what we do like barbecue and bacon and sandwich and burger. They rocked it out here. These people can do more with less. It's easy to do Less with more.

Harder to do more with less. And they did it in a very short amount of time.

1 hour. Yeah, 1 hour. 3 dishes.

Yeah, the appetizer was turned in at 20 minutes, the entree was turned in at 40 minutes, and the dessert turned in at 50 minutes.

We got the winner here from Finn's. The winner right here. This guy rocked it out from— hey, come on in, grab a chair, let's go. Come on. We're gonna do the Brady Bunch. Come on, we're on the World Wide Web.

So you are the chef at Finn's, and that is— I got— that's another place I gotta visit. I gotta come back and maybe do a show from your restaurant.

We welcome you.

Yes.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about what you made?

I think actually, I think the dessert won it. From what I heard, oh, that you had to use an English muffin You deconstructed it and made a bread pudding, right? Is that correct? It is incredible, right?

That is genius.

I mean, and eggs was one of the required ingredients to use, so eggs, the whole wheat English muffins, right?

Banana, the mini banana.

Yeah, having that, having that fresh mini banana was part of the key to this because I don't think anything else would have looked as good on there as that did. No, you know, we coated it with sugar, we torched it to, you know, caramelize the sugar, brûlé it. English muffin, yeah, fresh grated coconut, English muffin, eggs, cream, a little vanilla, sugar.

And you did all that on a barbecue grill? A barbecue grill with nothing other than olive oil and water. Yeah, right.

I saw you stuffing those little ramekins that you have. I'm going, what the hell is that?

Everything with aluminum, which is not what we're used to cooking with.

No, but you know, you can cook on anything really. You're a talented trained chef and it doesn't matter what the surface was.

It can be rocks, it can be whatever.

We do like it when it's easier though.

Of course. So it's easier with 300 people on a packed Friday night at pins, right? Is that easier, really?

Yeah, it is.

Yeah, that is easier. I mean, we, we do it, you know, 360, uh, actually 363 days a year. We take Thanksgiving and Christmas off, uh, but, you know, we do it every day. And, uh, we get, we get to work with fresh ingredients every day too, which makes, you know, what we're doing here a little bit more natural for us. It's because You know, like these little baby eggplant we got here, you know, it's like, I mean, we love that kind of thing. When we can get a hold of that, it's like, okay, that's the vegetable tonight.

So you did this without knowing what was going to be available and you turned that in at 40 minutes, right? So that was not, um, that was not impossible. That was not mission impossible.

Mission impossible. This is what Chef Josh and myself do every day, you know, we get together, we look We look at like what we get fresh from the produce, what we get fresh from the fish, and we go, okay, I think this might taste good. Yeah, you sure? Yeah, I think this will taste good.

Let's try it.

So even the plating, right? You thought ahead. Yeah, the paddle, the wood plank.

Uh, the wood plank is all Chef Josh on that one. He came in today with these and said, you know, last night when we were here, we got a little bit of a critique because we didn't have anything Fins on it because I'm taking care of that today. I'm making special Fins boards to serve on tonight.

And, and I don't know if there's a way to show underneath it, but they signed it. All the chefs, they all signed it as well. You can see it's a takeaway. So listen, that was really special.

Albeit you won this challenge, if you need some coaching, the one with thousands of dollars net in their pocket from the World Food Championship Linda Bonwell. Mike, she'll coach you up. She does coaching.

We take all the help we can get.

I'd be happy to.

Very cool, very cool. But you made some outstanding dishes.

This I love too.

This was just simply beautiful.

That was, uh, that one had to be turned in in 20 minutes, right? I don't even know what the ingredients were.

Fresh Florida shrimp we marinated with the water from the coconut and a little bit of our jerk seasoning, and then just sautéed up Julienne and sautéed up the fabulous fresh vegetables we had available. You did have some extra grilled them, cut them up, mix them up together.

Yeah, all on aluminum pans. They were cooked on a grill. No sauté pan, no other cookers, no smokers, no steamers, no nothing, right?

Yeah, that was it. And you guys— and a disposable pan.

You guys were kind of excited when when you heard coconut too. Yeah, I was like, oh my God, that would have freaked me out when I heard coconut. But I'm not a Florida, you know, I didn't cook down here, so. But you guys were like, oh yeah, coconut, cool.

Well, we got coconut and banana. I mean, to me right there, it's like I automatically knew what was going to be the flavors in our dessert.

Yeah.

What was your favorite surprise ingredient?

Well, my favorite, you mean the one that I found that I knew I could do the best with, or the one I hated the most?

We'll get to that. Let's do the best one.

Definitely the coconut, and the— and like I said, then those little bananas, that was fabulous.

You know, what was the worst?

Fresh horseradish. It's, it's honestly not something that we usually have. You know, we, we make cocktail sauce with horseradish, and we, we buy the stuff in the jar.

Yeah, like everybody.

That's the point of fresh, right? You got olive oil, a little bit of balsamic stomach, right? Not much else. Your own, your own seasonings, fresh herbs from Sweetgrass Farm, all organic, all hydroponic. You're gonna make flavor happen.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

And you did. You brought it home.

Congratulations.

Thank you very much. Wow. So Finn's at Sharky's, one of the greatest places in the country.

That's at Venice Pier.

We're at the, at the Venice Pier. We're right next to our sister restaurant Sharky's on the Pier, which which has been there for 28 years and is a real local favorite destination for a lot of people. And we're a little bit more upscale right next door. Surf's Ears and a little more.

If I was gonna do anything, I'd open Remora. I'd just suck on to you at Tim's at Sharky's and we'd open a little food truck right there.

We also have, uh, Snook Haven, which is a barbecue place. Since you're competing today, and I was before this, I was over there waiting to hear if our chef from there was winning any prizes, but there's 200 people getting prizes over there.

Yeah, it's not only the merchant in Venice, there's the cook in Venice.

Yeah, and I'm telling you, I was driving down the streets going, it's a Milan Turin. I'm getting, oh my God, the streets were all named out of it. So I'm like, I called home, I called Lisa, says, oh my God, you should see, we gotta come back here, it's so cool.

Oh, this place rocks with, with really food champions, hopefully a world food champion. Yeah, we hope so. $100,000.

$100,000. Tell, tell us about that, when that's happening.

World Food Championships, November 3rd through the 10th. Cook, eat, drink, compete, experience it all in celebration. The Heart of Kissimmee. I feel like a NASCAR driver. I'm going to keep changing hats here. Um, supported by Kenmore.

Experience Kissimmee.

But you're going to be there.

Yes.

And you know that in 2013 2016, a home cook dad, Dave Elliott, out of Olathe, Kansas, made his mother's carrot cake on the week his father passed away, became the world food champion, right? So why not the guy, The Merchant from Venice?

Why not?

We'll rewrite the story. Absolutely right. On the gondolier, in the gondolier. This is our row.

We're paddling up the creek. I'm telling you, God will love it.

With a paddle.

We're up the creek with a paddle.

Awesome job. You need to make t-shirts with that on it.

And who else was on your team?

We had Chef Jill, who her everyday job is our sushi chef, so she is very familiar with fresh ingredients. Every day creating new specialties for us. And then Chef Josh is our chef de cuisine at the restaurant.

So that was Chef Booze, right?

Josh Booze.

Josh Booze.

I love it.

He's Chef de Facebook. I think the guy's got a lot of personality.

Oh, he does.

He does. He is a really exciting guy to get to work with every day.

I bet.

I bet.

Well, you guys You did a great job. I tell you what impressed me was how set up your station was. I mean, your area was immaculate, and I actually took a picture of it to show people. I mean, you had everything in a place and everything just set so, and you were ready to go.

Well, our kitchen at Finn's is as exposed as this, so we're out there in front of the public every single night.

Well, it's good to be that way. You know, because you can be the— as long as you look composed overhead, you can be the duck paddling like crazy underneath all night long and no one will really realize.

So did you, did you talk about it before you got here, right? You had a little game plan coming in, right?

Oh yeah, we had—

how you would break down the responsibilities, who would be doing the prep, who would be doing the finishing. But how about who makes the decision, right? How does that work with a bunch of egos? Because kitchen's They do.

Um, but you know, usually, like I said, Josh and I work very closely together. We understand each other's strengths and we appreciate that, you know, we can feed off each other and come up with the best idea.

He's like Peyton Manning. I'm telling you, it's all about the team. He's won 5, you know, Most Valuable Players. What's all about the team?

I saw when you were plating this dish, and the tomatoes didn't come out quite like we wanted. So all of a sudden you thought you had them diced up.

Yeah.

And you put on—

what was your original plan with the tomatoes?

Uh, it was going to be a grilled disc of tomato on kind of underneath, but they ended up getting too soft waiting for the plating. So we said, okay, let's just make a little salsa out of this and put it on top.

Nice.

And that worked well.

It totally worked. I'll tell you what, you know, when, when you turned in, I know you guys were worried about the, um, the done You know, the level. Yeah, we didn't want our pork overdone, but it was, it was absolutely spot on.

And I'll tell you that as close as the score was, the tiebreaker ultimately between appearance, creativity, and taste is taste. So I always look at what is the tiebreaker. You not only won on the top line, you really won on the bottom line, which as a, as a chef as a cook, as a pleaser. It was about taste. You won bigger there.

Yeah.

Than you did anywhere else. So you not only won overall, you won where it matters.

Well, I figure, you know, the nice presentation and the pretty food, well, that'll bring people in, but if it doesn't taste good, they're not going to come back. So, you know, you got to have both.

And you know, it was interesting, just in, in the 8 competitors last night, um, there were some beautiful dishes absolutely gorgeous but not a lot of flavor. Or like, I, I got a beautiful piece of fish and it was raw. So as a judge, you know, you kind of still are all, you know, you get things all over the board. And, you know, the second round last night, of course, was just about in the dark the whole time, and you guys just did an amazing job. And, uh, that certainly was unplanned, but boy, did you guys—

I was lucky that I not have to compete in the dark.

Oh, that's right, you were in the first round.

I feel bad for them, but it's all— they're all equal, they're all equal.

One didn't have light, so they're, they're competing on a level playing field.

It's, you know, not as nice a field as I got, but it's still all level.

It was.

And there were a lot of people with their flashlights and their phones giving them—

everybody jumped in.

I wish I could have helped, but my battery was low.

Yeah, it was a fun night.

You did a great job. You represented Finns at Sharky so incredibly well as a team. I saw you working through the methodology, the game plan that adjusted after time. You had a plan and then you had a plan for the plan. And the plan only emerged once you knew what the ingredients were.

Yeah, we had scenarios like, okay, we're going to try this, we're going to try this. We had some really great ideas we never even used because it's like, okay, this got to be there, it's got to be there, you know. Um, yeah, the sauce on here with the, uh, you know, the bacon and shiitake sauce that Josh made on there. I was working on dessert, I didn't even know what it was until he was done with it. What do you got here, Josh? Tastes pretty good. So a little bit more horseradish.

Yesterday we went a little bit more citrus, today a little bit more if it's such a word as savory. Yeah, like banana versus citrus, right? Shiitake mushroom versus other things, right? Horseradish. You did an incredible job to keep it fresh, keep it light, keep it in theme. It came out perfect, Tim.

Yeah. And quite honestly, you know, we, we shop both days because we didn't want to just use yesterday's leftovers. And, you know, we went in thinking, well, let's get this, and we get there No, that's not gonna work. So you, you just have to go with what's absolutely, you know, the freshest, what smells—

did a great job.

All right, what was the biggest challenge for you? I'm just curious overall of this whole experience.

Well, yesterday when we're like, okay, you're bringing us pans to cook on, right? That's them.

No, really, you're bringing us pans? Really?

That was a bigger stumper for, I think, all the chefs, more so than any ingredient you could have thrown at us yesterday. Now, today we were prepared for it. We thought it through. I was this morning at our restaurant, you know, doing a prototype of a dish we didn't do, but I was, you know, doing it in a water bath in an aluminum pan on the stove, see, will this work?

So that's the beautiful thing, right, with Ask Chef Dennis. Right, you never know what you're gonna get. You walked into something crazy. You were blown away.

Oh my God, the dishes are seeing here, right?

Oh, they're just done on a grill. Yeah, and, and aluminum pans and water. That's crazy, right? That's crazy. That goes back to exactly what it's all about, which is we need to get back to fresh. Yeah, yeah, period. Bring the flavors out from what nature provides. Don't recreate, don't create the flavor for something, pull the flavor out.

Yeah, and it worked. You know, that's the beauty. We, we actually went around and inspected everybody's table to make sure that they, they— you were allowed to bring, I told you, fresh herbs, spices, and boy did you, you had a set. How many spices did you have in that rack? Oh, I need to post.

Oh, we saw some things though. If you're not cheating, you're not trying hard enough. Yeah, so I saw some cheating going going on. And then we removed it and we balanced the scorecard and it was perfect.

You made me get rid of my aji amarillo, which, uh, you know, is one of my favorite. It's a chili paste to me. It's a spice.

Come on in, Chef. Come on in.

Come on.

Here's the secret. Here's the secret right here. In Jack and Jill, there's really just Jill. Back in the prelim, this is Jill. So explain your role with Finns and Team Finns. You work at Finn's, right? You make sushi.

So you're used to— she is the sushi chef. She is in charge of the sushi department.

So don't worry about it, don't get nervous. Millions of viewers right now. This was nothing new to you, right? Fresh, raw ingredients. Yeah. So do you compete on the line in the restaurant? Make the most beautiful dish? Do you compete for the customer, or did this feel different competing with other chefs?

It didn't feel like a competition while it was happening because I was with my team that I'm with every day.

Well, you did great. You did awesome. You were the secret. He was raving about you before you got online.

You did a great job.

He said this is nothing new to you. It was new to them. To the guys, but to the gal, it was nothing new. What you do every day, you make something magical happen from something fresh every day.

Did great.

Congratulations.

That's the whole story. It's making something delicious and magical every day out of fresh ingredients.

Yeah, I was, uh, we probably need to introduce the folks that actually made all the freshness happen. Sure. Sweetgrass Farms.

Are they here?

A minute. They are. They're right behind us.

Yeah, Jim. So hydroponic organic, it's not necessarily H2O, but it's H and O. Not a railroad, but it's H and O. We got Jim here from— talk about it— Sweetgrass Farms, hydroponic organic. You don't even wash it, do you? You can eat the dirt pretty much.

Yeah, we use, we use a little bit of orange oil, use a little bit of dilute hydrogen hydroxide. We use a little bit of maybe a soap solution, but we don't use the dangerous pesticides that most farmers use, probably mainly because we don't use dirt.

If we don't—

if you don't use dirt, we don't have soil, okay? Everything's grown in the ground coconut husk, and the beauty is the insects won't lay their eggs in that coconut husk. So if you don't have the insects, you don't need the pesticides. Weeds won't grow in that stuff either, so you don't, you don't need herbicides. So what you wind up with is a product that is virtually without pesticides, no animal fertilizer. We use a very space-age, highly refined liquid nutrient. So you don't have soil, you don't have animal fertilizer, you don't have bugs. So you, you've got the freshest, best tasting stuff that we could ever imagine growing. And I was originally attracted to this whole idea by the technology, kind of a technology freak, and the technology behind this growing has been embraced by a lot of people. NASA, the Mars project, as in Mars, uh, all the research stations in Antarctica use our system. They've got a smaller version in the space station. They tried to use a larger version, but they don't have enough room. Uh, this system was put in at Epcot 16 years ago. It's still there. So it's, it's literally the, the way that things should be grown. And, um, the World Health Organization and, uh, other large organizations that sort of think they overlook— oversee the health of the world, they have pretty much deemed that hydroponics, and mostly vertical hydroponics, is a way that the world is going to be fed in the future.

Yeah.

So as a physician, you deal with every day the result of the things that we've done, right, to our bodies, to our ecosystem, to the environment, to the foods that we eat. And you decide to take another path, right, which is to prevent health issues by creating better products, better food, better things for us to cook, better ways for us to eat, right?

That's correct. Yeah. If you look at diseases, and if you— if you can't even listen to the radio anymore without hearing about cancer hospitals and cancer institutions and cancer this and cancer that, we are getting more cancers. And the re—

we—

and the scientists firmly believe that a lot of it, maybe as much as 40 or 50%, is directly related to the pesticides and the herbicides and the hormones. One really scary thing, and I, I've I don't want to get— I don't want to get too negative, but one really scary thing is the FDA about 2 months ago approved the use of this pesticide called 2,4-D. If you look up 2,4-D, it was one of the main ingredients in Agent Orange. So those are things that the FDA has said, well, it's— yeah, just go ahead and use this, fine, just use that.

And there's so So many items that are banned in the EU.

Absolutely.

We— I think we have 12 that are banned in this country, and there's hundreds in the EU that are banned. It's insane. And Roundup, uh, glyphosate wasn't working anymore, so they had to put half of Agent Orange in it. I was at a conference and I heard that and I went, what? Yeah, I was like, I couldn't believe it.

And the other thing about hydroponics is it, it Everybody's concerned about the environment and this system of vertical hydroponics. I mean, you look at California and the crisis that they're having with water. I mean, they're drilling in the Central Valley of California that produces probably half of the world's fresh produce. They're drilling deeper and deeper and deeper, and they're— the, um, I think National Geographic just came up with an article said they're actually so far down in the aquifer that they're getting water that was here during the Ice Age. They're that far down. So they keep drilling deeper and deeper and deeper. Well, if they would embrace vertical hydroponics a little bit more, we use 10% of the water that's used for ground-based crops. We use 20% of the land, the land footprint that's used for ground-based crops. So why California has not thoroughly embraced vertical hydroponics is because be on me. But the problem is it's easier for them to drill deeper and deeper and deeper and more wells and, and deplete the aquifer than it is to, to do things right. So that's, you know, it's, it's a battle we're all going to have.

And we love what you're doing. You know, Sweetgrass Farms, you guys were amazing.

Um, the produce and the vegetables and the fruits, just seeing and tasting and believing. Yeah, to see what's able to be done. I know that Sweetgrass Farms will come out with a line of products that makes this fresh flavor available for things in recipes and soups and salads and salad dressings that you just add a little bit of oil, you add a little bit of the things that we offer to the chefs here to make this. Come on, again, hydroponic or organic vegetables, water, a little bit of olive oil, and herbs and spices. Absolutely gorgeous. Who's this gentleman behind us?

Jose Torres, uh, who's Jose is our main grower. He's a professional grower. He's worked with hydroponics for at least 9 years now. And the guy that invented this, made so famous this vertical hydroponic system that we use, NASA uses, his name's Tim Carpenter, and he's got all the patents. Anyway, so I We stole Tim's best guy, that's Jose. So, uh, do we own him?

He owns us.

I work for him.

We're so proud to have somebody like Jose. He's so conscientious and intelligent, and in terms of being able to drive the system I can't think of anybody who would be more knowledgeable and who would be more capable of doing what we want to do. Um, when I first— one of the first times I met him, he didn't know I was watching, but he would like caress the plants, and he— it's like, it's like each one's his—

is he the plant talker? He's like, like he sees each one one of these plants is his children.

So, I mean, it's amazing how he can make that whole place sing. So, it's, it's, uh, we're so proud to have him.

Now, where is, uh, Sweetgrass Farms?

It's in Sarasota, uh, actually it's in Sarasota County, but it's, uh, it's, no, it's in Manatee County. It's a university, um, between 301 and Tuttle. So if you're at the intersection of 301 and Tuttle, it's less than a mile from Sarasota Braids and Antlers.

And can regular people go in and buy from you?

We've got a stand there, and if people don't see what they want on the stand, they can actually wander around the farm and the girls are picking more fresh. So you can actually leave there with things that are still growing.

Do you have zucchini flowers?

We will. Everybody asked about this.

They are so good.

I didn't have any last year. I couldn't.

We won't have them.

I think one of my favorite ingredients that you provided us were the shoots, the sunflower shoots. Oh my gosh, they were incredible. Every one of them. You talk about caressing something, you know, some of the dishes last night, I don't think we had any leftover for today's competition, did we? Oh, there was.

I don't remember which one it was, but holy cow, are they beautiful!

And they take— the taste is unlike anything that you've had before.

Beautiful. Well, it takes a village to cook a meal. You know, you gotta have the ingredients, you have to have the talent, and then someone to eat it. And this— we've got everything here. It's been a wonderful Wonderful.

And thank you so much for coming down, Chef.

I'm so happy I could. It was, it was just phenomenal. I learned a lot. I had a great time. I met some wonderful people. And what's better than hanging out with some local people? I mean, really, nothing better than that. Foodies, foodies are just phenomenal. So, you know, I, I love everybody. It's, it's great. Well, thank you.

Thank you.

DennisLittley.com, right?

Yep.

That's the destination cuisine, world food championships, sweetgrassfarm.com. We got everything.

Yeah, we got Marker 4.

Yeah, we were rocking it here. It was a great day in Venice, Florida, and that's Florida, not Italy. And I'm happy to be here today. So thank you all for coming, and I will see you real soon.