Tyson, Guest Food Critic

Can You Say Yum?

I know.  You're jealous

My job has a few perks.

I have had to work on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Chritmas Eve, the 4th of July, Weekends, Graveyards, late night, and early mornings.  Throw in long hours of beaking and developing news on occassion in a high stress environment and it gets rough.  On the flip side, occassionally I get to enjoy a few perks.  That food was one of them.

Judge Time

I sampled everyone of those plates and loved every minute of it.  The skill of the chefs was amazing.  At that level you begin to notice the little things, does the steak have a nice sere on the outside, is the skin of the fish crispy, did they overseason or not enough season, are the the vegetables an afterthought or a star by itself, what were the extra things they did to bring out different flavors and textures?  It was such a neat experience.  One I hope to repeat.'

How it worked

There was a big taple in the middle of a hotel ballroom.  It had a lot of different kinds of food on it.  All of the chefs got to select their ingredients from that table.  They had 1/2 an hour to "shop" then if they went back it deducted from their score.  After the shopping time came an hour of cooking time.  When the clock ran out, the judging began.

I, along with three other judges, had plate after plate put in front of us.  The chefs weren't allowed to explain what they did, the food had to speak for itself.  There were curries, reductions, steaks, stuffed pork medalions and candied walnuts.  We had time to take one or two bites from each plate and then we had to judge.  I would have loved to just sit down and eat.  We assigned points to the main dish, to the additional dish (some made 2 entrees) and to the teachnical skill.  Scores were tallied up and just four points seperated first from fifth.  The winning score: 103.5

I'm Available

In case you are looking for a food critic, I'm available and I'm always ready to eat.  The chances are pretty good I'll like your food.