Washington Food Page hosts first “Kitchen Clash”
Photo courtesy of LD Designs
The kitchen clash
The winner of the food competition will receive this cutting board donated by Shawn Philbrick, who makes handcrafted wood products and owns the business I’m Just Board.
Photo courtesy of Nate Mass
Photo courtesy of Nate Mass
The judging criteria for the upcoming Kitchen Clash
Tony Panyanouvong loves to cook.
The 28-year-old Louisiana native, who now lives in North Strabane, especially loves to cook Thai, Japanese and Cajun food, he said in a recent interview. Since his family and friends also enjoy cooking, Panyanouvong said, they often make it competitive.
“I challenge my friends and family all the time, but it got a little boring,” he said. “I’m not in the culinary field, but I’ve worked in a restaurant for a long time. If you’re a good cook, you have this ego to you.”
Panyanouvong decided to challenge a locally famous chef, whose food is known to anyone who frequents the “Washington PA Food” page on Facebook. In a post on the page, Panyanouvong wrote, “I challenge Chef Eric Miller to a cooking battle!!! Do you accept my challenge homie?”
The post received a lot of attention and several comments from folks asking to be a food judge in the competition.
“This guy, Tony, threw out this challenge. I was totally surprised,” said Miller, who is a private chef and owns a catering business. “We plan on it being all in fun.”
Miller has been working as a private chef for about one year. He is invited into people’s home to prepare a meal or to cater parties and events.
“They pick what they want off the menu, and I bring all the food and my portable burners,” Miller said. “The only thing I need from them is a sink and a water supply. A lot of people see what I do on the Facebook food page. I do a lot of business around here.”
Miller accepted Panyanouvong’s challenge, and the two of them talked logistics with the food page founder, Nate Mass. Together they’ve organized a time and place for the cook-off, along with sponsorship opportunities and a chance to make it something bigger.
“With the food page being involved, it could be a big event,” Miller said. “Also, there’s not much stuff like this happening around Washington County, so knowing I’ll be one of the first people to do it, that’s all good.”
The “Kitchen Clash” competition will happen between 2 and 5 p.m. Monday at Fusion Japanese Steakhouse. The food sponsors include Ross Farms, Heritage Craft Butchers and Outback Steakhouse in Washington. Maestros’ Hot Sauce and J&D Cellars Winery also made donations for the event.
“We have a lot of people involved, so it’s another way to advertise local businesses and such,” Mass said.
Mass was in charge of selecting six local judges for the competition, the theme for which is surf and turf. Mass said he tried to select folks who enjoy that type of food.
“For this first one, we’re just going to see how it goes,” he said. “Down the road, the idea is to be like a local cooking show. We all watch those cooking challenge shows on the Food Network. This is sort of bringing that to our end, locally.”
Mass plans to stream the competition on the food page, via Facebook live, as it won’t be open to the public. Panyanouvong plans to get video of the event and edit it into an episode for the newly created YouTube channel for the Washington PA Food group, where potentially more “Kitchen Clash” episodes could be uploaded.
“Win or lose, I’d like to be the one orchestrating the competitions in the future,” Panyanouvong said.
The idea is to do different themed challenges, like pizza or barbecue, Mass said.
Whichever dish wins this first one, Fusion Steakhouse plans to feature it on their menu for a month, Mass said. The winner will also receive a new cutting board, donated by Shawn Philbrick who makes handcrafted wood products and owns the business I’m Just Board.
“With the popularity of the food page and with different local places and local chefs becoming more open to doing things in the public, I think this is going to be a success,” Miller said. “More and more people will get on board, especially after this first one is done.”