Richmond vegetarian festival

Good morning friends! I hope your Monday is off to a great start.

I had such a fun weekend it’s hard to know where to began, but it probably makes sense to start with one of the big highlights – the 9th Annual Richmond Vegetarian Festival! I’ve been to the festival every year since moving to Richmond and it keeps getting bigger and better each year. This year was the best by far! Not only was I involved as a volunteer but I was also a judge for Richmond’s first Meatless Gourmet, a vegan “Iron Chef” competition.

Being a judge for a food competition is a tough job, especially when you have three amazing chefs preparing and presenting delicious vegan dishes to you. Although it’s definitely something I could get used to.

Let me set the scene:

There wasn’t a open seat in the “Kitchen Stadium” tent when Jason Guard aka RVAFoodie played Alton Brown and introduced everyone.

In the usual Iron Chef fashion there was one secret ingredient, which was unveiled to everyone minutes before the 60 minute time clock started ticking.

The secret ingredient reveal. Dun dun dun…

TOMATOES!

To be honest, I was a little shocked that it was tomatoes just because they’re not in season here yet. Maybe that was the reasoning behind it though – trying to throw off the contestants. Sneaky sneaky!

After the reveal, the clock started ticking and the chefs started cooking…

Here’s a breakdown of the fabulous contenders:

Maat Free and her sous chef, Carol Brown

Maat is the owner of VEGI ♥ LUV, a kiosk on the corner of Adams and Broad featuring Global Fusion Green Cuisine. Her food is all natural, all vegan and heritage and positive energy shine through in everything that she makes.

Jen Hurst and Kayla Serene

Jen is the author of the blog RiverCityVegan and has been vegan for 5 years. She has worked with area non-profits to help educate communities on the benefits of a vegan lifestyle and has assisted with local animal rescue efforts. She most recently finished teaching a six-week vegan cooking class at the William Byrd Community House.

Nick Bergheimer and his brother Frank

Nick is currently a team lead at our local Whole Foods Market. He’s been in the industry for 15 years and worked in the kitchens of some of the most beloved vegetarian restaurants in Richmond, including Ipanema Cafe (one of my favs), Harrison St. Coffee Shop and many others.
While the chefs worked busily for one hour preparing their dishes, the judges watched calmly from the sidelines.

I must say that I felt honored to be on the judging panel with two industry experts: Deveron Timberlake, Food & Drink Editor of Style Weekly and the MIA, Christine Wansleben, owner of Mise en Place. Christine actually had to leave before the judging took place so when it came down to judging time it was Deveron and I along with one randomly selected audience member. As it turns out that audience member was a twelve year old named Miles. I’m pretty sure finding out that a “kid” was going to be part of the judging panel was like pulling out another secret ingredient to the chefs. At least I know that’s how I would have felt.

A short 60 minutes later, the dishes were plated and the timer was going off. All the chefs were completely calm and collected and had everything plated before the time was up.

Each chef prepared 3 different dishes and there were 3 rounds of judging. This means that I had the pleasure of tasting 9 dishes! There were no specific categories for the dishes so they all ended up being entrees or appetizers. I was hoping for at least one dessert item but no such luck.

The first round of judging:

Jen’s tempeh bacon salad with a mango salsa.

Her tempeh bacon had the most amazing flavor.

Nick’s chilled corn soup.

I loved that the soup was cool as it was over 90° out! The soup had a nice, sweet flavor, but knowing that this was made from canned corn kind of took away some of the wow factor.

Maat’s curried hoecake with black beans, avocado and pico de gallo.

I enjoyed all three dishes but Matt’s hoecake rose above the competition for me. The curry spiced hoecake was topped with curried black beans that were so flavorful you would have thought they had been cooking all day. And the fresh pico de gallo, avocado and greens added a fresh and cool aspect to the dish. It can only be described as amazing. It took a lot of self restraint not to polish off everything on the plate, but I knew there were more dishes on the way.

The second round of judging:

Jen’s corn cake with red peppers, cherry tomatoes and guacamole.

Although the corn cake was a little tough, there was a ton of flavor and spice in the toppings and the guacamole rocked. Jen definitely likes her spices!! Plus, I could have swam in a bowl of the guacamole as it was to-die-for.

Peaking out in the back of the photo above is Nick’s tomatillo salad. The salad featured watercress, tomatoes and tomatillos. It was topped with a rich lime vinaigrette that was out of this world. I’m thinking he should bottle the stuff.

Last up was Maat’s “love plate” – a caprese salad of sorts featuring rounds of tofu, tomato and sauteed spinach.

This dish would have been so much better had the tomatoes been perfectly ripe and juicy, but alas, they were not. I really liked the flavor of the seasoned tofu and spinach which was heavily dusted with nutritional yeast. It was certainly better than most flavorless mozzarella you normally get with caprese salad. Although, I did miss the basil.

For this round, I didn’t have a specific favorite. I really liked components of all the dishes – the tofu in the caprese salad, the toppings and gaucamole on Jen’s dish and the dressing on Nick’s salad but none of the dishes took the spotlight for me.

Side note: By this time I was happy I wore a dress because otherwise I would have been unbuttoning my pants.

The third round of judging:

Nick’s toastada stack with black beans, pico de gallo and an avocado verde salsa.

Jen’s green earth soup.

Maat’s RBG (red, black and green) live kale salad.

I was highly impressed with Nick’s ability to make delicious toastadas from scratch. Maat’s raw kale salad made me smile because I’m a huge raw kale lover, but Jen’s raw soup won in the taste department for me. It was such a simple dish but I really enjoyed the fresh flavor profile and the texture. It’s the perfect summer soup and so healthy.

I think this calls for a Holy Yum!

Overall, I thought all the chefs did such an amazing job. I will note a few observations:

• Most of the dishes used tomato as a garnish rather than a key ingredient. The “Use of the secret Ingredient” category got the lowest score from me almost every time.
• It was also interesting to see the similarity of all the dishes- lots of salad, lots of corn and an ample amount of avocado. I think that having guidelines for each dish would have been helpful in this regard – perhaps having an appetizer, entree and dessert category would have created a little more diversity.

Each dish was judged based on four categories: taste, presentation, innovation/uniqueness and the use of the secret ingredient. Moments after the last dish was tasted, the judging sheets were submitted and the winner of competition was announced…

And the winner was: TEAM VEGI LUV, Maat Free and her lovely sous chef, Carol Brown!!!!!!!!!

These ladies totally deserved to win! Maat has an amazing energy that shines through in her cooking. She brought her heart, soul and ancestry to the kitchen stadium tent on Saturday and it was very apparent when tasting her dishes.

The great news is that even if you missed the Vegetarian Festival you can try some of her signature dishes like the RBG kale salad and famous black beans by visiting VEGI ♥ LUV, her food kiosk at Adams and Broad. I know for a fact that I’m going to be checking it out!

The whole competition was an amazing experience for me, despite the fact that it was difficult to know that there could only be one winner! All the chefs really were top-notch! By the end of the judging I’m quite certain I had the biggest vegan food baby possible considering I basically had to wheeled out of the tent by Isaac. It was totally worth it though! Now I’m just waiting for a call from Iron Chef America for my next judging gig. In the mean time I guess I should go to work!

Have you ever been a judge in a competition before, food or otherwise? It’s tougher than it looks, no?

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