Top chefs and a ‘Top Chef’
Michel Richad and Kaz Okochi
Chefs from your favorite D.C. restaurants sat together on a judges panel Wednesday night to rate chefs whose food you may never get the chance to sample.
Five embassy chefs-in-residence — representing Afghanistan, Haiti, Hungary, Morocco, and Trinidad & Tobago — prepared specialties from their region for guests and A-list chefs as part of Cultural Tourism D.C.’s Embassy Chef Challenge.
Michel Richard, Ris Lacoste, Kaz Okochi and Art Smith were the panel’s star chefs. Dressed in their chef’s whites, they spent most of the evening together at a corner table, drinking, eating and joking about what country has the best food (France for Richard and Japan for Okochi, natch). Definitely a foodie’s version of a power table.
Joining them on the panel were Washington’s reality cooking show stars Rock Harper from Hell’s Kitchen and Carla Hall from this season’s “Top Chef,” who admitted to Yeas & Nays that she’s “visualized this moment for a long time,” finally being on the other side of a cooking competition as a judge.
But not everyone could go home a winner — there were only two awards to give out, the Judges’ Choice and People’s Choice Award.
Evidence that Washingtonians have good taste buds, Chef Nazha Kasraoui from the Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco took home both awards for her Chicken Pastilla.
Carla Hall
(Photos: Carrie Devorah)
