Fifth Military Culinary Competition
September 27, 2008
Hosted at and by Barracks Row Main Street, Washington, DC
SIGN UP FOR 2008 COMPETITION
See 2007 CNN Clip(wait for ad to run)
Hearty congratulations to the 2007 First Place Team from the Commandant's Office and Combat Development Center.
GySgt William Allison
GySgt Andrew Atkinson
GySgt Dennis O'Leary
SSgt S. A. Reed
They won:
Two weeks training program at Disneyland (2) or Disney World (2)
An $1100 course at the Culinary Institute of America
A $2500 course at Dale Carneghie
A chef jacket from New Chef Fashion
Congratulations to 2nd place winners, Navy and Army from the University of Missouri Reserve/Guard unit.
Ensign Leslie Jett
2nd Lt Colt Baxter
Midshipman Mic Smith
Sgt Wade Ramirez
They took home a check for $1000 each thanks to contributions by ($1000 each) Kelloggs, Rich Products, McCrae Marketing, ($500 each) Insinger and the Military Evaluators Alumni Association.
Congratulations to 3rd place winners, from the Army Chief of Staff, Joint Chiefs, Secretary of the Army, and Army Jet Detachment.
SFC Kathleen Willis, U. S. Army
SFC Charles Johnson, U. S. Army
SSgt Joshua Pallardy, U. S. Air Force
SFC Michelle Carville, U. S. Army
They received a check for $500 each thanks to the ($2000) generosity of Rose Packing Co.
BIG HUGE THANK YOU TO:
Rational (the world's best ovens) for $5,000 plus 5 ovens used in the competition, training and organization help from President Chris Kohler, Marketing Vinod Jotwani and Corporate Chef Steve Snitkin.
Competition Chairman CMSgt Steve Ray, who jumped in with a few months to go and worked tirelessly to get it all done.
Competition Host MSgt Jesse Camacho and his staff, especially SSgt Derrick Oliver, but I know everyone had a hand in it. We were homeless until he stepped up.
Marine Barracks 8th and I - the culinary staff, security, public relations, CO, and General and Mrs. Conway, we appreciate all of their terrific support.
Those who helped before and during the event - Cristina Amoroso with Barracks Row, CMSgt William Garner, Chef Wally Davenport, Phuc Pham, Atheena Le, Bob Struckman, Rick Diaz, CS1 Murphy Greene, Kitty Whittington.
To the organizers from day 1 - Chef Wally Davenport who had the first thought of a competition, to Marti Mongiello who put Wally and I together, and Chief Garner. Vince Paris was huge in the first 3, and Kitty Whittington hosted the first two. Oh, and me. The huge success of this event was built on the first 3 competitions.
Hubert Corporation which provided a $100 set of culinary knives for each of the 56 competitors.
Texas Best gave us $500 for the medals and other expenses.
Products and supplies came from - Beltway Restaurant Supply, Calico Industries, DC Rental, Ferrante Brothers, Hearn Kirkwood, New Chef Fashion, Six Points. Surely we had the best food in the boxes ever - HUGE lobster and HUGE pork loins.
Our culinary competition went up a bunch of notches thanks our location and hosts, with CNN and the Pentagon channel being on site all day. Reporter Barbara Star pushed the CNN buttons, according to the producer. We were also on CNN Headline News, CNN Online, Channel 8 (NBC) in Las Vegas. Notes like this have been flowing in from members and friends.
We saw you on CNN International on Sunday Morning in Brazil. You are GLOBAL now!!! Congratulations on a successful competition and in scoring such great international press coverage for the foodservice industry and the US Military. Doug Adair, former Executive VP, CHRIE.
On CNN.com there are 3-4 feature stories posted at all times, Judy reported that we were one of those and when you clicked on it I was part of the clip saying, "Military chefs are awesome," which was 20% of my aswer to their question, "What would you like the viewers to take away from watching this competition."
We also had the Pentagon Channel with us all day and their programs go worldwide on military bases, we were on a program called something like Accross the Services, which aired twice the Monday after the competition. They spoke to me longer and I expect we were on longer. Plus we had reporters from all the military newspapers (Army Times, Navy Times, etc.) and they were talking to the competitors and taking tons of photos. They have followed up for further information for their articles.
The fact that we created an IFSEA event worthy of all-day CNN presence was key, you couldn't buy that kind of publicity.
Sunday, we are on CNN Headline News regularly all day.
A friend in Las Vegas said it was on Channel 8, the local NBC station.
What I liked the most was seeing people, sometimes 5 deep, crowding around the teams watching them work and asking questions. It was really mind-blowing. We were a key part of an Octoberfest held by Barracks Row Main Street, so there were thousands of people coming by all day - we were accross from the beer tent.
Congratulations to all the teams that competed, they just did a terrific job, and had fun doing it, or so it seemed.
