By David Rogers. January 26, 2011.  BLOWING ROCK -- North vs. South, to be sure, but it was the most civil of "wars." It didn't even come close to a WWE smackdown.  There were no "winners" declared at the Fire on the Rock "2010 Champions' Dinner" at Crippen's Restaurant Wednesday night -- unless you count the 80 or so diners who got to sample the cuisine of the past year's award-winning chefs from Blowing Rock and Asheville.

This event was an exhibition, a mere "warm-up" to next week's launch of the 2011 Fire on the Rock event, which is the wintertime brainchild of Crippen's owner, Jimmy Crippen.  Now in its seventh year, Fire on the Rock pits top restaurant chefs in the High Country against one another in friendly, diner-judged competitions.  The preliminary, "mano a mano" rounds, including the quarterfinals, are all staged at Crippens Restaraunt on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, beginning February 1st.  For just $39 per diner, anyone can be a judge in the preliminary rounds.

For the actual Fire on the Rock competition, the restaurant diners evaluate a six-course meal prepared by the two competing chefs (they change from week to week).  No one except the chefs know who prepared what, so it is quite literally a "blind" taste test.  The chefs must use a mystery ingredient dictated by event organizers, and the diners decide who goes on to the next round and who goes home.

In the later rounds, including the final, a panel of distinguished judges determine the winner. The 2011 head judge is John Batchelor, a restaurant reviewer for the Greensboro News and Record for 30 years, who also writes features on the travel and hospitality industries for Focus on the Coast magazine.

Batchelor will be joined on the 2011 panel by Donna Florio, a senior writer for Southern Living magazine, who helps plan the stories and taste the recipes that go into each month's magazine. Moreton Neal is the third judge. He explores restaurants in the fine dining-rich Triangle Area of North Carolina, and serves as food editor for Raleigh Metro magazine.

The Fire on the Rock Champions' Dinner exhibition held Wednesday night featured 2010-winning The Gamekeeper restaurant's team, led by chef Sam Beasley, vs. the winner of last year's "Chef's Challenge", the Asheville knockoff event that was staged for the first time in 2010.  Representing Asheville was the team from Inn on Biltmore Estate, led by chef Rick Boyer.

Crippen shared with Blowing Rock News that the three featured ingredients for the exhibition's six-course dinner were skate (stingray), quail, and chocolate.  Everyone started out this six-course meal with "Pan Seared Skate Wing," which we later learned was prepared by the Biltmore team. In addition to the skate, which was taken from sting rays caught off of the coast of New Hampshire, other ingredients included whipped sweet corn, shrimp ravioli, and smoked almond brown butter.

The second skate dish, prepared by The Gamekeeper team, was called "Duck Fat Seared Skate Wing." Other key ingredients included roasted fingerlings and artichoke, hedgehog and trumpet mushrooms, lemon-white wine, and Oregon black truffles. The diner seated next to Blowing Rock News owned a culinary school in Asheville. She shared, "I have had a lot of truffles, but never Oregon truffles. Normally, truffles have a strong, earthy tone to them.  These Oregon ones hardly impact the flavor at all."

Unlike the lady seated next to me, my only credentials as a food reviewer are that I like food.  A country boy with pretty straightforward culinary tastes, I found both skate dishes to be tasty, but I favored The Gamekeeper's preparation because it didn't overwhelm the fish flavor. You still knew that you were eating fish. Plus, the lemon-white wine sauce reminded me of a restaurant in La Jolla, California, where one of my favorite entrees was scampi prepared in a lemon-wine butter.

I was really looking forward to the second course revolving around quail, because I grew up hunting quail and dove in the mountains of Central California. If we bagged our daily limits, we'd come home and clean the birds -- then my mother would prepare the most wonderful roasted quail supper you could imagine.  So I came into Wednesday night's exhibition with a certain yearning that someone could fix quail as delicious as my late "Mom" used to fix.

Once again, both restaurants had wonderful preparations -- even if they didn't live up to Mom's cookin'!  The Biltmore's entry was "Roasted Pharoah Quail," prepared with a sweet potato pancake, fig sausage hash, and sage-maple demi. The Gamekeeper featured "Pharoah Quail and Cornbread," accompanied by rattlesnake-chicken sausage dressing, and makers mark-thyme demi.

Remember how I described myself as having "straightforward" culinary tastes?  Well, once again I preferred The Gamekeeper's quail dish because the quail flavor that I remembered from my childhood was not overwhelmed in the preparation or inclusion of other ingredients.  In other words, it came closer to Mama's!  But I will confess to liking both, for different reasons. While I better liked the way the quail was prepared and presented in the Gamekeeper version, the Biltmore dish had an interesting mix of flavors that were definitely a delight to the palate.

None of the first four courses could hold a candle to the desserts, however. They were both so different, but equally wonderful.

The Biltmore team served up "Bittersweet Chocolate Tart," which was a cacophony of flavors that simply worked.  It featured Yogurt sorbet on a base of bittersweet chocolate, with bacon-caramel popcorn (of all things!) sprinkled over the top, and a raspberry.  The salty vs. sweet battle that raged against my tastebuds was utterly delightful.

Not to be outdone, The Gamekeeper's culinary artists "poured" a "Chocolate Trifle Martini," featuring sea-salted caramel, dark chocolate mousse, white chocolate espresso sauce, chocolate-dipped bacon rolled in hazelnuts -- all in a pretzel-rimmed glass.  I had never imagined, much less enjoyed chocolate-covered bacon before, and was more than pleasantly surprised.  The dark chocolate mousse was the centerpiece of the dish, however, and did not disappoint this chocolate-lover's dining aspirations.

All in all, it was wonderful fun and served (pun intended) as an effective lead-in to next week's Fire on the Rock first round.  All of the preliminary "heats" (pun again intended!) serve as elimination rounds.  The start at 6:30 pm at Crippen's Restaurant.  Reservations are required, and can be made by calling 828-295-3487.  The match-ups for the elimination rounds are:

• Feb. 1 -- Green Park Inn vs. Crave
• Feb. 2 -- Glidewells vs. Painted Fish Catering
• Feb. 8 -- Rowland's vs. Meadowbrook Inn
• Feb. 9 -- Hearthstone Tavern vs. Char
• Feb. 22 -- Jackalope's View vs. Bistro Roca
• Feb. 23 -- Sorrento's vs. Canyons
• Mar. 1 -- Table at Crestwood vs. Manor House
• Mar. 8 -- Paolucci's vs. Josh's on Union Square
• Mar. 15 -- Vidalia vs. Feb. 1 winner
• Mar. 16 -- Gamekeeper vs. Mar. 8 winner

The quarterfinals will be held in late March:

• Mar 22 -- Feb. 8 winner vs. Mar. 15 winner
• Mar. 23 -- Feb. 9 winner vs. Feb. 22 winner
• Mar. 29 -- Feb. 23 winner vs. Mar. 16 winner
• Mar. 30 -- Feb. 2 winner vs. March 1 winner

The semifinals and finals will be held at the Hayes Performing Arts Center during the Blue Ridge Wine & Food Festival, April 17-18.

In announcing the preliminary match-ups, Crippen noted, "Right out of the gate we have a couple of the toughest competitions.  On Feb. 1, James Welch will lead the Green Park Inn entry. Neither he nor the Green Park (which is under new ownershipp and management) competed last year, so they get one of the early heats.  But Welch has won Fire on the Rock before, so an early round placement does not reflect his quality.  And Josh Grogan from Crave is a young gun trying to make a name for himself and solidify Crave's position as one of the great restaurants in the High Country."

When you think about it, it is hard to go wrong paying to be a "judge" for one of the preliminary rounds.  The food you are evaluating is prepared by some of the top chefs in the High Country.  Nothing against Burger King, McDonald's, Wendy's or Taco Bell, but this isn't "fast food" you're eatin'!

 

 

 

 

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