Ohio Club’s ‘Burger Chef’ brings home the bacon at world championship
A local chef placed among the top 10 chefs in the world competing in the bacon category last week at the World Food Championships in Dallas.
Michael “The Burger Chef” Dampier, the general manager of the kitchen at the Ohio Club, placed eighth in the category while competing on a two-man team with fellow chef Jean-Paul Lavallee of Quebec, Canada.
The two faced off against 36 other teams in the category. Each team had to compete in two rounds and the top 10 teams moved on to a third round. Around
1,500 chefs competed at the contest across
10 different categories. Placing fifth after two rounds, Dampier’s team went to the final and ultimately finished eighth.
Each team was competing for a $10,000 prize, and a shot at getting to compete in Indianapolis in 2020 for $100,000 and to be the overall winner. While Dampier did not advance to that competition, he said he had a great time in Dallas.
“I had fun … I’m ready to go back next year,” he said.
This was Dampier’s first time to compete at the contest, but he has been involved in it since 2016. For the previous three championships, he served as a judge. After three years of watching other people compete, “I got the bug,” he said, and decided this time he had to compete, too.
Dampier said he also served as a “cheferee” during other categories. He
said he got to put on a striped shirt and helped make sure chefs were following the rules. Dampier also got to give live demos at the event on a stage owned by Walmart.
The best part of his trip, Dampier said, was that he got to spend an evening with fellow competitor Johnny Trigg, who is known as the godfather of barbecue. Trigg is a multi-world champion in barbecue who has appeared on TLC’s show “BBQ Pitmasters.” Dampier said Trigg placed first in the barbecue category after the second round. Seeing an 81-year-old chef keep up with “a bunch of young bucks” was “an inspiration to me to keep going,” Dampier said.
While he is now a world-class chef, Dampier said it was not always a goal of his.
“Honestly, I didn’t want to (cook),” he said. “My mom cooked in kitchens for 30 years.” He said he would see his mother, Lou Dampier, get up early every day and be worn out by the end of the day.
Deciding not to follow in her footsteps, Dampier said he nonetheless kept finding himself cooking. He said when jobs he had would have company picnics, he would end up being the cook. The same thing would end up happening at family get-togethers. Dampier said he eventually came to a crossroads in life.
“Food … kept pulling me,” he said.
This week will mark Dampier’s fourth year at the Ohio Club. When he started, Dampier said owner Mike Pettey asked him if he could work one day a week at the restaurant but now he is full time.
The Ohio Club is known for its hamburgers, which led Dampier to jokingly call himself “The Burger Chef,” a nickname that has stuck. Commenting on the word “chef,” Dampier said that in his mother’s three decades of cooking, she was never called a chef. While he did eventually study at the New Orleans School of Cooking, Dampier said he learned a lot of his cooking knowledge from his mother.
While the title of “The Burger Chef” may have started out as a joke, Dampier said that, since 2016, the Ohio Club has won eight best burger awards and he has his eyes set on winning another burger award — the World Food Championship’s best burger.
Dampier said he intends to compete in the hamburger category at next year’s competition. While he said he wants to see the Ohio Club bring home the world championship, the most important part of his job is making the customers happy.
He said he tells the other cooks at the restaurant that all of them are only as good as the last meal they cooked.