Top Vegan | Episode 1: Classic American - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCEAj0cKQqg

Come on in, chefs. Welcome, welcome. Gather round, gather round. Well, welcome, everyone, to top vegan. We're here at the mix, this state of the art culinary facility here at Columbus State for the next week to compete across six challenges, where you'll be tested on your culinary creativity, your kitchen aptitude, and above all, your ability to adapt to what's in front of you. At the end of this week, a winner will be crowned top vegan, and with that comes business, mentorship, and a $10,000 cash prize. My name is Chad Goodwin. I'm a local restaurateur. I've owned two of the most popular vegan restaurants here in Columbus for around the last five years. I've been recognized both locally and nationally for the work we've done in our restaurants. But this isn't about me. This week. I'd love it to be about me, but it's nothing. It's about all of you and the wonderful plant based dishes you're about to be making. So if you'd like to turn around, take in the space, and take your space at your station, we'll get ready for the first challenge. I think I have a legitimate chance to become the first top vegan. So I think there's a difference between confidence and cockiness. My mama told me not to be cocky. I think I have a shot. We'll see if I have the stamina. To the average American, the word veganism has a lot of connotations to it. And unfortunately, from the outside, some people can view plant forward dishes as bland and uninspiring. So for that reason, at both of my restaurants in the city, I focused on making classic american dishes that any average American could enjoy. I started with burgers, fries, and shakes at my first restaurant, Eden Burger. And now at my downtown diner, forth and state, I've got all that, plus pancakes, breakfast all day, stuffed crust pizza, and a whole lot more. The goal of today's challenge is to show people that going plant based, going vegan isn't about giving up your favorite foods. It's about finding the right substitute for your palate. So for today's challenge, that's exactly what you'll be doing, creating one stunning, classic american dish, all vegan. And to help me judge our classic american challenge for today is the executive chef from Liberty Tavern. Please, everyone, a round of applause for chef Nick Thompson. Welcome, chef. How are you? Yeah, happy to have you. So for the last four and a half years, chef Nick has been running things as the executive chef over at Liberty Tavern. And if I'm not mistaken, you've been eating a lot more vegan the last year. Yeah. So in April of 2021, I changed my diet up, lose a little weight, you know, get a little more energy. I think we're really excited to test your dishes, and if you guys are ready, I think it's time to start the first challenge. You guys ready? Oh, yeah. All right. For this first one, you'll have 75 minutes for one stunning, classic american dish. And your time starts now. Back up, back up, ladies. I'm rooting for everybody, honestly. I mean, of course I'm rooting for myself first. Have to be honest, you know, but I would love to be the next top vegan, but these people are talented, so you never know what's gonna happen. Does anyone have sugar? White sugar? A lot of brainstorming. A lot going through my head as I was going through the pantry and then even getting back to my station and was like, oh, I forgot this. Okay, do I need that? Do we have that? I would try not to serve nasty food. I promise. Ooh, might waste a mushroom, girl I just tasted once. I really feel it starting to heat up in here as well as our water. Yeah, really, really getting in. Everybody's hit heat at some point now. Everyone hustling and bustling. I'm starting to feel the nervous energy transfer from me only to them. I'm feeling pretty good now. I'm feeling pretty good. I don't have to cook till I get to the restaurant tonight. Does anyone have regular salt and pepper? Salt, pepper. Thank you so much. No problem. See, we haven't seen anyone starting to run around too fast yet, but I think once we hit sub 20 minutes, that's when we'll see people really are right. Right. What do you think? We take a little walk around, see what everybody's working on? Let's do it. Wonderful. All right, chef Noel, you want to tell us what you're making today? I see some mushrooms and maybe some milk and dredge. I see some. I'm actually doing chicken and waffles, but I'm making them into sliders. I actually work at a senior living home, and I'm a sous chef there. I do not have a restaurant, but that is one of my goals. Hopefully being on top vegan will help me get there. I appreciate the words of encouragement. Cause I gotta. What kind of pasta did you decide to use? So I made semolina, all purpose flour. Just normal pasta. Got gear ready to go. Just need to get a rolling boil. Right now. I am a stay at home. Dad, when I went vegan, I was living in Lubbock, Texas. I went from eating out all the time to suddenly happen to know how to cook. Shanley, how you doing? What are you making for us today? I am making a vegan take on pot pie. Well, we are very excited to see it. Hopefully, I can get it on a plate. Yeah. And trust me, I'll give you just enough warning. So whatever you got done, you just throw it on a plate, and contractually, I have to eat it. Okay. All right, that's good enough. Let's do it. I just started getting more into cooking during the pandemic, actually. I watched a few documentaries and slowly started transitioning to vegetarian and then vegan. Are you doing okay? Yes. How are you? I'm, like, sweating like that pig. Yeah, I am. Oh, my goodness. Ria, how about yourself? What are you working on over here? Okay, so I am making corn and black bean fajita nachos. I'm whipping together one of my favorite sauces. Well, with the ingredients that I have, yes. Maybe making some substitutions. You know, it's kind of like a little bit of a remix. I definitely have the passion and the skillset to make it happen and the work ethic and the drive and the determination and the motivation. That's just to name a few. And maybe this is good for the stereotypes of vegan, but I don't see a single block of tofu. I'll be happy to see some other plant based proteins get put front and center. Now, in your application, you had mentioned you kind of set up challenges like this to compete against your husband. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Now, we're only maybe 2025 minutes in. How is it stacking up? Has it fell harder at home against him, or maybe here at the mix? Well, the difficulty is we would let our children choose the secret ingredients, so we would give them a credit card and send them loose and whole foods, and they would come back with a kiwi and a knob of ginger and a jalapeno. So that was. And say, make it work. And say, make it work. And we'd have to share that between the two of us. I've been vegan for 25 years. Back in the day, restaurants really didn't accommodate vegans or vegetarians, so I had to learn to cook in order to eat. This is what I get for having a messy station. Oh, right there, front of my face. Hey, Elizabeth, what have we got going on here? Jalapeno hush puppies with a green goddess sauce. What's the inspiration for this dish, I always enjoyed hush puppies as a kid. I mean, it wasn't something we made at home, but it was kind of like a special treat. I went to culinary school, started macrobiotic cooking. I was a personal chef. I had a vegan supper club in Austin, Texas, behind. Behind Rio. May I use your hot sauce? Did you need any tasting spoons, Christian? Yeah, I need Oprah right here. Oh, okay. Thank you. What are you gonna be using for the chicken substitute? What's the basic? That's gonna be oyster mushroom. I love oyster mushrooms. So I'm excited to see how you fry those up, my friend. So I'm actually a project accountant for a telecommunications company full time, and I'm a vegan private chef on the side in the Cleveland area. So it's a cashew cream sauce, and normally we use peas. Didn't have any. So I'm using broccoli today, and I'm gonna do, like, a broccoli cheddar mat. I think we do have a can of sweet peas floating around. It's somewhere to go. But we're too far. We're too far. We switched it. My name is Chloe Graphio. I'm from Columbus. I actually went to school for creative writing and painting, so I would love to write a cookbook someday. Yeah. Time just flying by. Oh, yeah, that kitchen time. Kitchen time. Kitchen time is different. It's not eastern. It's not mountainous time. Kitchen time. And it all goes faster. Oh, yeah. Anybody have a lime, or did you guys use them all? No, there's some lime. I have lime. I use it. Christian was hot enough. Ah, thank you. Do you need it? I was. Got 30 minutes left, chefs. 30 minutes. Thank you. 30 her. It wouldn't be a cooking show without saying her. Looks like Jeff was running back to get something. He must have forgotten something from the room. Listen, I don't even go to the grocery store once. I usually get out to the parking lot. Have to go back in for something. I couldn't imagine being here with the parameters around what you're doing, going back and forth, remembering everything. I'm feeling good. Coming down the home stretch. I recovered from my burnt tempeh, redid it. Oh, wow. Wow. And now you're glad we waited to eat today. I think the hungrier I get, the more critical I'm gonna become. You just roast every one of them. Yeah. Be like Mac and peas. More like Mac and please get this a hell away from me. Who's next? Chicken and waffle chicken and not full damn chicken and waffle. There you go. Boom. We're ready. Which. Which dish do you think is gonna come out and absolutely knock our socks off? I really think that chicken and waffles, I think she's very confident in what she's doing, and chicken and waffles has now, the last ten or 15 years, become this next wave of americana staple. But, yeah, personally, that, you know, Teresa's biscuits, gravy, tempeh hash. That hash sounds fantastic. We got two minutes, chef. Final two. If you got something on heat, I would take it off and get it on a plate. 1 minute, chefs. 1 minute left. Start thinking about plating. All right, 10 seconds, chefs. We're going hands up at 054321. Hands up, everybody. Hands up. And now let's everybody wave to each other, because we all met some new people today, and everybody did great. Give yourself a round of applause. It was intense. I have never been in a commercial kitchen before. It wasn't chaotic, but I was like, I just kind of locked in and just rolled with it. I think everyone has an equal opportunity to pull ahead here. All right, chefs, you've spent hours here today at the mix in the last 75 minutes. Seems like it was a whirlwind. And now we're gonna get to the part that you and I know we have been waiting for all day. So if you're already, I'm thinking we'll get into trying some dishes. All right, Jeff, would you like to tell us and everyone what you've made for us today? Yeah. So this is what's called a four way. So it's spaghetti skyline or Cincinnati style chili. Now, what did you use for, like, the meat chili substitute that you've gotten here? Lentils. Lentils, wonderful. I think with the cheese and that sweetness, maybe finding, like, a little bit more, like, spice takes me back to visiting one of my high school girlfriends at skyline, when she'd give me a half off plate of noodles. It was awesome. But, you know, there's a hard ceiling to how it can look. So, Christian, you want to tell us what you made here, sir? So, chefs, I have a barbecue chicken sandwich, and the chicken is oyster mushroom with baked zucchini fries and a homemade barbecue sauce. I would recommend smushing it down and just taking a bite. You said you baked these? I baked them, yes. Incredible crunch on them. Have those first few bites for your chef. Pretty good. You can taste a lot of the vinegar and the barbecue sauce and the slaw. I had an idea, and then what I had wasn't there, so I had to roll with another one. Chef, would you like to tell us a little bit about the dish you made? So I did a little spin on chicken and waffles instead. I made mini waffles and kind of made it into a sauce slider. I would say lego my eggo, because I might need the rest of this sandwich, friend. Good balance of the sweet and the salty and not too much pepper. It worked for me. Like I said, I'm a brunch person, so I think I did okay. You're looking nervous and excited, which makes me nervous and excited. Do you bake a lot of biscuits? Yes, I do. Wonderful. Known for my biscuits. You're known for your biscuits? Okay. My kids know me for my biscuits. I'm known around home for my biscuits. Yeah. Really great flavors in the hash. You get a lot of that savoriness, a little bit of balance of hot with the cooling off of the corn there. There were no raw cashews. There were roasted ones, but those won't work, so I had to improvise. So this is my broccoli cheddar macdje. So I have a cashew cream sauce that makes it like that Mac and cheese feel. I recommend diving straight into the middle, because that's where it's probably warmest and gooey. This is. This is where the action is right here. Okay. I think the broccoli's cooked really well. A lot of times, people get it to be too soggy or too mushy or it has a nice little crisp to it. The crispy onions do create a wonderful contrast and texture with the pasta. I think I played it too safe today. I was kind of, like, kicking myself for doing that. Chef, please tell us about your dish. Jalapeno hush puppies. So there's jalapeno, fresh sweet corn, and green onions in the hush puppies, and then a green goddess dressing of fresh herbs and avocado and lemon. Well, let's see how the heat plays in. Chef, please. Going right for the jalapeno. Could have used a little more spice in the hush puppies themselves. I know with jalapenos, you don't want to overdo it. Yeah, that's why I didn't want to, like, oh, I don't want to like, till they're. Surprisingly, it doesn't taste spicy at all. I mean, I guess I played it safe with the jalapenos. Like, I didn't put the seeds and stuff in. Cause I'm like, well, I don't want to, like, burn their mouth. So I made a rustic, vegan version of a classic american chicken pot piece. Wonderful. And, yeah, I saw while you were waiting for things in the oven, you were doing a little bit of praying. A little bit of waiting, a lot of praying. It certainly got that hearty feel to it in my first bite. I feel like it might be a little bit too much salt. Definitely a wonderful pot pie. My only issue, that dough is a little bit thick. Overall, pretty pleased with how it went and hoping that continues. Chef, please tell us about your plate. So that is a plate of fiesta nachos. I did have to do a workaround. There were no tortilla chips, so I did have to make tortilla chips. And I saw you dancing with these beans earlier. I'm hoping we see Nick two stepping. I might have gone and, like, diced the peppers a little bit instead of the slices, but the flavor, the flavor's on point. Well, it's definitely a dish fit for a party and a good time. It seems to have worked out like I'm. I'm pleased. All right, chefs, let's start off by giving yourselves a round of applause, because that was amazing. 75 minutes, new kitchen ingredients. You didn't know what was gonna be here, and you guys put out some wonderful dishes and definitely made our job hard. I was really impressed. I think you were as well. Absolutely. I think we're gonna step out for a few moments, deliberate, come up with a winner for today's challenge, and unfortunately, then I'll have to release one of you for the rest of this week. All right, chef. So I think let's start with some positives. Who do you think fared the best today? I think one that stood out to me was the biscuits and gravy. It had a lot of different aspects to the dish. Yeah, I absolutely agree. Another few that stand out for me were both of the mushroom chicken sandwiches. You know, something that I think you could pop on any american menu. You could make more dinner with it and be able to do either one. Yeah, I would say, elizabeth, with the hushed puppies for an hour and 15 minutes, I would expect it to be pushed a little further. Pot pie was kind of middle of it as far as presentation goes. It wasn't anything exciting, but the flavor was definitely above. I think those nachos for how many veg? How much veg was on that plate, I would have loved so much more spice. All right, that was a tough 75 minutes challenge. Our top three dishes for today were chef noel, chef Teresa, and Christian. Chef noel, your dish was absolutely delicious. Something I could throw on my menu right now. Teresa, the number of components on your plate and the complexity of it really contributed to all of the flavors. And, christian, the sandwich was delicious. Zucchini fries were crisp. Great job. And now we're gonna let Chef Nick announce our winner for this competition. Based on the actual composition, flavor, and components, we decided that Christian will be the winner of this challenge. Clap it up for Kristen. Overall, it was just a big, great american dish. So congratulations, my friends. I was just trying to lock in as much as I could. I'm just gonna try to get better as this competition goes on. Now, if you'd all like to give a round of applause for chef Nick for helping us. Thanks, guys. He's gonna get out of here and enjoy the rest of his night before he's back at Liberty Tavern tomorrow. Hopefully running some more vegan specials there soon, so be on the lookout. Thank you very much for coming to meet us today, chef. Thank you. One more time for Chef Nick. As sweet as it is to announce a winner, unfortunately, every episode, we're going to have to eliminate someone. Our bottom two dishes for today were Rhea and Elizabeth. Rhea, from you, I think we were just looking for a few more standout flavors. That's like, the bottom of the barrel. You know what I mean? It's like one or the other. So I was kind of like. My heart was beating really, really fast. And for you, Elizabeth, the flavors were great. The hush puppy was cooked to perfection. I think we were just missing some of that balance. Starting off with american classics, I mean, that's not really my forte. And now for the hard part. The chef that will no longer be in the mixed for top vegan. I don't want anybody to go home. But I was just like, you know, if it's me or her, like, let it be her, not me, is Elizabeth. I think we were just looking for a little bit more. With 75 minutes, those hush puppies would have made an astounding side for a dish. But I think we were both missing that wonderful, hearty entree to really root that dish in something classic Americana. If you'd all like to give each other and Elizabeth and rhea a round of applause. We had a really long day. It's never easy to see anyone go, but hopefully we've made some good connections, some great friends. My first choice of dish, the main ingredient to it. Other contestants took it right away in the pantry, so I had to resort to my backup. That's tough. That is not the easy, fun part of this. Even though we've only known each other for a day, I can see how passionate you all are about cooking and plant based foods. Tomorrow's challenge is going to be international. We're going to be honoring the roots of where plant based diets come from. Go home tonight, get some rest. We'll be back at it early tomorrow for our international challenge here on top. Vegan. I feel like I don't want to over prepare because that won't let me think on my feet. Warm tomorrow will definitely be more of a challenge. So tomorrow, they better have a big cup of ice water, because I'm putting all the high, all the heat, all the spice. I feel really good. But I didn't come here to just win one challenge. I came here to win this whole thing, and I'm gonna keep it going.