Babson Executive Chef Alex Brugger Brings Home Second Place in World Chef Challenge
Executive Chef at Babson College, Chef Alex Brugger finished in second place of the World Chef Challenge this November.
The 2016 World Food Championships took place November 9-13, 2016 in Orange Beach, Alabama. The event highlighted some of the most iconic cuisines from around the globe. While the World Food Championships focused on 9 categories and hundreds of competitors from all walks of life; the World Chef Challenge was exclusively designed to find and feature professional chefs in a unique challenge that had to impress a celebrity chef as well as culinary professional judges.
On September 19, Brugger locked in his ticket to the 2016 World Chef Challenge at the University of Massachusetts Club in Boston, MA.
In the finals, Brugger squared-off in three rounds of challenges that assessed his hand skills, prep skills, cooking acumen and overall creativity. In the first round Brugger had thirty minutes to de-bone a full chicken and create his specialty dish; pan seared brick chicken with tri-colored orzo and wild mushroom ragout.
The second round consisted of a mystery basket of eight items (sword fish, pickles, cream cheese, olives, canned chili, ketchup mirepoix and bacon) where Chefs had 20 minutes to pre-pare a dish using sword fish and pickles as well as items from the small communal pantry. Brugger impressed the judges with his restaurant style grilled sword fish served over corn meal and cream cheese polenta topped with rendered bacon, pickle and tomato puttanesca sauce. The final round was all about hand skills; Chef’s had eight minutes to roll and cut a cup of basil; peel, devein and clean sixteen 20 sized shrimp; and shuck six out of twelve oysters. Brugger completed this round in a speedy six minutes and forty seconds!
Brugger’s dedication, focus and culinary talent were nothing but impressive in the competition. “Chef did an exceptional job representing Chartwells and I’m proud to have him a part of the Northeast team, I look forward to watching Chef Brugger showcase his talents in future competitions,” says Regional Executive Chef, Kevin Blaney. “The World Chef Challenge is an unbelievable showcase of culinary talent and we are proud of Chef Alex Brugger representing Chartwells in this world wide event.”