Chef sweeps the competition
Chef George Bieber sweeps ‘Chopped’ competition at Pottstown expo
Don’t tell George Bieber to stay out of the kitchen. He can certainly take the heat.
In a sweeping performance during day three of the Pottstown Home and Family Expo, Bieber, owner of Shorty’s Sunflower Café, took home two top chef trophies at this year’s “Chopped” competition Sunday.
“It was fun, it really was a lot of fun,” he said. “Very challenging.”
Modeled off the hit Food Network show, and in its sophomore year at the expo, Chopped featured area chefs and one student chef from the culinary arts programat Pottstown High School. They each had 30 minutes— using a basket of secret ingredients plus access to a full pantry of seasonings and other ingredients — to create a dish that would wow a live panel of judges.
Then came Beat Adam Burke — patterned after Food Network’s “Beat Bobby Flay.” In this challenge, Bieber and Chef Peter Fizz, from Brookside Country Club, had 15 minutes to create a dish good enough to land them the chance to cook against Burke, last year’s Chopped winner and owner/chef of Lily’s Grill. Finally Burke and Bieber had 20 minutes to create dishes good enough to be crowned Beat Adam Burke champion.
In the first competition, Bieber faced Fizz, 17-yearold Jaylen Chestnut, and in a last minute substitution, Adam McGee, of McGee Electric and his daughter Sierra. The chefs had to create a dish using vanilla pudding, chocolate-covered peanut butter pretzels, prunes and an Italian hoagie. To earn his first trophy, Bieber created a chopped salad with a deconstructed hoagie, featuring a crispy Italian meat sprinkle and a dressing made of citrus, red wine vinegar and vanilla pudding.
Bieber said the pudding at first was the most challenging of all the ingredients to incorporate.
“It was so sweet, it was so incredibly sweet,” he said.
Next came Beat Adam Burke. Heading into the challenge, Burke who was one of the panel of judges said he had his eye on Bieber, as he considered him the biggest threat to his title. Creating a dish that had to highlight Pepino melon and freeze dried cantaloupe,
Bieber created a bacon taco salad with a melon salsa.
“I tried to bring a little bit of flavor into the melon itself with the freeze dried cantaloupe,” he said. “Lime juice, a little cumin on the bacon and we’ll see what you think.”
The judges loved it and sent him to the final against Burke.
For the final challenge, the two chefs had 20 minutes to combine cauliflower, radicchio, Greek yogurt and chick peas. Burke presented a cauliflower rice with garbanzo beans, chicken and radicchio salad on top with blueberries and pancetta. Meanwhile, Bieber created a warmroasted cauliflower salad with chickpeas, yogurt dressing topped with a blueberry sriracha gastrique and crisp pancetta with dill.
Both men tied with the judges leaving them to pick a winner based on what dish they would like to eat again. Bieber came out on top
“It was lots of fun, challenging,” he said afterward. “I love Adam (Burke), I love Pete (Fizz) so it was fun to just be here playing around with them and bonus that I won.”
After the show, Tammy Hetrick, the expo’s organizer who also judged in the Chopped competition, said the expo as a whole went well, despite a drop in attendance from last year. A little over 2,000 people attended the expo throughout the weekend, a drop from the over 3,000 that came last year, she said.
A number of programs like the Pottstown Frosts, Build a Better Birdhouse, the kids corner and the Chopped competition were very popular with audiences. The expo, she said, works because it connects local independent businesses face to face with clients.
“I think it’s great for Pottstown as a whole,” she said. “As a business owner when you can meet with a potential client face to face, I think that’s huge … I think that separates us from other expos.”