Burnt Hands Perspective
This is a raw and unfiltered look into the pu$$ification and state of the restaurant industry as a whole, powered by longtime friends Chef/Owner Antonio Caruana and former bartender turned News Anchor/TV Host Kristen Crowley.
Representing all aspects of the industry from the front to the back of the house we will dig into the juiciest stories and pull from decades of experience in one of the sexiest and most exciting industries in the world...the food and beverage industry.
From international chefs, sommeliers, industry pros, and so much more, this show will cover all of it without a filter. You turn up the volume; we'll turn up the heat.
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Burnt Hands Perspective
Ep 21 - Food sport competitions - World Food Championships, where Home Cooks and Chefs compete
What if the world of culinary competition could rival the excitement of a major sporting event? This episode brings you the thrill of the World Food Championships with our special guest, Mark Conway, a pivotal figure in the realm of "food sport." Initially skeptical about the high-octane nature of these culinary contests, Chef Tony shares how his first experience completely overturned his assumptions, transforming skepticism into awe as 1,300 cooks from over 40 countries competed with precision and passion.
Mark helps us explore the unique format and electrifying atmosphere that set this event apart, likening it to a culinary Super Bowl where timing is everything, and every second counts.
Beyond the heat of the kitchen, we uncover the heartwarming spirit of community that defines the World Food Championships. Stories of camaraderie and support among diverse talents, from home cooks to Michelin-starred chefs, highlight the event's role as a melting pot of creativity and inspiration. We dive into tales of young chefs defying the odds and the power of the competition to reignite passion in seasoned professionals.
We also shine a spotlight on the growing culinary potential of Hampton Roads, Virginia, and the exciting new categories on the horizon.
In this episode, we cover:
• Discussion of the significance of food sport
• Insights on the atmosphere at the World Food Championships
• Evolution from a small event to an international sensation
• Experiences and stories from various competitions
• Importance of inclusivity in competitive cooking
• The process of obtaining a golden ticket to compete
• Inspiration drawn from competition for culinary professionals
• Future plans for expanding qualifiers and competitions
Please support the World Food Championships and learn more at https://worldfoodchampionships.com/ and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/worldfoodchampionships/
And connect with Mark Conway at https://www.instagram.com/markconwaywfc/
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All right, here we are. Burnt Hands Perspective. We're back at it. Mr Mark Conway, if you want to find out what the importance of those red shoes are, stay the fuck tuned, because you're going to find out as time goes on. In the meantime, though, the best dressed man of the hour at every competition walking around. You can pick him out from the crowd. Like I said, stick around, you'll see why. Now, mark, please tell us, because we have somewhat of a limited time, but it's you know, we could talk for hours anyway, so we got to shoot that right out the gate.
Speaker 1:now, the World Food Champions. Let me tell you how I championships. Rather, Let me tell you how I was introduced to Mark in the first place. Let's talk about this. You came into my restaurant many years ago and you had a show you were producing before COVID that stupid word.
Speaker 3:And it was Kitchen Ambush. The name of it alone is top tier.
Speaker 1:So bring in ingredients locally sourced, throw it at the chef, see how we can incorporate it. I did it with you. You brought me peanut butter from a local peanut butter. What was her name? Again?
Speaker 3:Dee's Nuts. I love Dee's Nuts so I'm like Dee's. That's so bad. I said that out loud Dee's. So anyway she.
Speaker 1:I said that out loud, deez. So anyway she's great though. Yeah right. So he brought this peanut butter in. I didn't know what the fuck to do with it, because here I am an Italian chef on the moment, so I ended up making an actually really good peanut butter polenta.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, and we did that with the Sarah Lamb chops and it came out fucking amazing it did you were the first person to to mimic a jelly, so it was like a peanut butter and jelly type of lamb chop. They actually came out real. It was really good.
Speaker 1:So when I ate them I'm like, oh shit, should I? Can I do this somehow? Moving from then to on now, we haven't seen each other. I know one time you came in during the pandemic thing, when I had my dining room going and you came in and it was a great time seeing you there, and then that's when you started introducing your idea of the World Food Championships or your involvement in it. This is a whole new level of conversation because, as a chef, as watching competitions as actually avoiding competitions, because my life, my competition is on the floor every freaking night. So we live under that guise of competition. We have to compete with our guests, other chefs, our staff, everything. We're constantly in a competitive mindset. So watching competitions to me is not so entertaining, right, because it gives me STDs.
Speaker 3:PTSD, not STDs, that's a very different competition yeah right PTSD, not STDs. That's a very different competition.
Speaker 2:Yeah right.
Speaker 1:So PTSD right, so there's no pill for that.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 1:Like the old clap. You know what I'm saying. No no, so anyway, it brings me back to that. So, mark, tell everybody here, because this is a food, the best part about this is the term you came up with. I think you came up with it Food sport. Food sport, yeah, food sport, and fuck what it is, oh my God.
Speaker 3:It's a sport.
Speaker 1:It is a sport.
Speaker 3:It's cool.
Speaker 1:Tell us about it, man. Tell us how you got involved, where you went from it and where it is going and how we can be involved still.
Speaker 2:So the funny thing, food sport is you have competitive cooking. We've seen it for years. It's been on television, it's you know it started early in pbs. Competitive cooking actually started way back the state fairs, those blue ribbon pies.
Speaker 2:That, grandma is true you're right, yeah, but now you fast forward to what the world food championships does and it's about 1300 cooks from over 40 countries, broken onto 300 teams, competing in 12 categories over five days, and it is truly a team cook. That's why you get the sport angle. It is running a red carpet. It is high octane, high speed, the biggest pressure you're going to get.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you guys don't fake it like the TV shows where you let the clock run longer. Like the clock is set, this is the time and you have to stick to it.
Speaker 2:I mean we have disqualifications all the time. We also don't have the okay when your time's up, just hands up. We don't do that. You have to take your dishes, run all the way down a red carpet, get it to that turning table before time runs out. If you don't and you guys saw it, we had teams not make the turning table, they're out.
Speaker 1:They're not just. They're not just. Uh, you do have the golden ticket, which we can talk about, but but for the most part, these people are competing at different levels on a on on a stage, more so, right in front of people real time, real energy, real hype. Now, when I walked into this place, you and I went there with the team here, the whole team. Yeah, we showed up. And when I walked into this place, I went by what Mark told me you know, I'd never been to it before, Like every chef out there, it's another competition. And da da da Wrong Instantly. I was wrong. I walked in this place. I'm like. We got off the airplane, yeah, and Indianapolis airport looked like they set it up.
Speaker 1:For us it looked like Vegas, yeah, world food champions, this, that and the other, da, da, da, da, da. I'm like this is set up for us as we walk through here. They're just going to take it all down. The prop is up. That's what it felt when we got to this place, the fairgrounds. Where it was in the auditorium, it literally looked like the center, like where, if you're at the Super Bowl, where you would see the press booth, the announcement booth and all that hype and all the merch and all that stuff. It was amazing. The red carpet Forty kitchens, a stage.
Speaker 3:I mean you guys lay out all of it.
Speaker 1:And they were already cooking.
Speaker 3:Yeah and yeah we got there. You already had the juniors competition started. So I think from us and I mean he's obviously more in the culinary world than I am in that sense of the kitchen but I never knew the levels of competition or how much competition was out there for chefs or cooking.
Speaker 1:Well, I didn't either. This is different. This is crazy. Yeah, this in particular one, you're not wrong, and with my culinary knowledge and where I've been, of course, I've done the contests, I have my awards, I've won my little contests, especially coming up as I was younger. I have all that stuff, yes, but they were nothing like this. This is something that's out of reach. I mean, you have to go there to see it. I sound like a salesman right now, but I am kind of because I believe it.
Speaker 3:This show is not sponsored by the World Food.
Speaker 1:Championships. But it could be. But we have. I mean, I have this connection to it. I was out there. I'm like a kid in a candy shop man. I'm like I'm walking down the aisles, the energy is going off. People are cooking over here. People are running over here. We're going to play. We're going to have to B-roll the hell out of this clip right here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we have all the footage of it, but talk about how it formed, because it started small. You guys grew it over 12 years and you're now I mean it's reaching the big stages where you're growing again.
Speaker 2:So I mean, what was the evolution in that and how did they come up with like it evolved into a food sport. So our founder, mike McLeod, was part of KCBS and that's the Big Barbecue Association, and he was huge, huge in the barbecue world and really saw a void for everything else. What about the other categories, what about the other types of food? What about the other competitors? So he formed the very first World Food Championships and it was in vegas.
Speaker 2:You can actually, I think, see it on hulu okay wow 12 years ago, 12 years ago it was, it was a wow moment. It's when the oh wow, everything we didn't know yeah, we know all the stuff we don't know so then, from there it went to orlando, learned even more we didn't know. Went to orange beach, alabama that's where I came in is. Went to Orange Beach and we're outside in the dirt under tents. There's dust and sand blowing all through the tents. You're in Orange Beach, alabama, during the off season.
Speaker 1:Is there even a beach there?
Speaker 2:I think they closed it officially. The water goes away and everything. Is it a lake?
Speaker 3:It's just a dry area.
Speaker 2:It was insane.
Speaker 1:Orange you. Glad it's not water Orange you glad we're not there anymore.
Speaker 2:Sorry, orange Beach, I love you, but from there we went to Dallas and had four years of Dallas. Now we start really seeing things pick up steam. Then, coming into this big transition, which was year 12, we had a new company form, which is World Food Championship Holdings. Where was year 12, we had a new company form, which is World Food Championship Holdings, where a guy by the name of Michael Eaton came in who came over from IMG and Endeavor, that whole group that pretty much owns everything that is anything entertainment-wise. They own WWE and the you know the cage fighting.
Speaker 1:It's huge.
Speaker 2:So now we go into this first year in Indianapolis. Now there are TV crews there. It is being shot basically for a pilot to determine maybe a three-letter network that wants to pick it up. That we'll know in the next few weeks. So you've got now this evolution to where it's so global. We hit over 40 countries this year. We're now talking about developing WFC Japan, wfc Europe, wfc UK, wfc Australia. So we truly are forming this world food championships that at some point in the very new future you'll have the winners from all of those meet, the winners from the Americas, all in one place.
Speaker 3:International Say it's in.
Speaker 2:Dubai, and now you have the world's biggest food competition ever Sure like the Olympics.
Speaker 1:It would be pretty much a year later, the Olympics of food.
Speaker 3:So cool.
Speaker 1:And that's the feeling I get. It was so Olympic Village type of thing. This is what I got when I walked into this place when the press was there.
Speaker 1:We walked in to find out I was a judge. I was invited to be a judge, which is another story of greatness so I walked into that signing up and I was in a different category of judges. Remember, I felt like the clip on Karate Kid, when they go to check into the first karate tournament, right, and they're saying their name wrong and everything, and he's up at the table and he's trying to figure out. That was me and you. And they're like we don't know where you're supposed to be. I said, well, I don't either. So and then it was just a whole other thing, but it was. It was that intense to where they were so organized they didn't even know where I was supposed to be because their part of their section was so they were doing just they were doing their check-in, so it was like no, you got to go over there, right?
Speaker 3:so I was like okay, man.
Speaker 1:So I felt like an oddball because of the organization, it was just really. I'm walking through there. You know, we walk into the pantry where the competitors can get all their food. And that was this year. It was supplied by Sam's Club. So you have all this huge pantry you're walking through.
Speaker 1:It's just an amazing thing it's cool, yeah, and like I said, I can't wait to show this B-roll on here so they really can get a feel for what's going on. No-transcript Absolutely. You have celebrity chefs now that literally came from that Right and we've had the pleasure to meet, talk, to hang out with.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's just inspiring for me. Now I would never consider being in a competition anymore right, because I already told you why at the beginning of this clip.
Speaker 1:But what I did fall in love with was judging and because it gave me a different connection and a different perspective to the competitors' foods and it gives me a different way to look at a chef's perspective and it really put me in tune with that and it made me feel great because I wasn't competing but in a sense I was because I didn't want to do them wrong.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I want to make sure I'm giving them the best of my palate, my knowledge, my experience, right, and it really gave me just a, just a upliftment in in attitude.
Speaker 3:You were super inspired when we left there, because you have to kind of blend the judging between, like a paul abdul and a simon cowell, like you don't want to be too mean because you don't want to crush their dreams, but you have to be, and you did a great job of that, but it was you were like probably I mean probably the most inspired I've seen him as far as like leaving a place like that like seeing those different palates and I think some of the things when people look up World Food Championships, like when I went there, you said, like the categories are, you know, noodles and seafood.
Speaker 3:So I thought they were just cooking noodles. No, you have to build the entire dish around it. So you get this like elaborate interpretation Plus their main ingredient that is gifted.
Speaker 1:Sponsored ingredients, it may be a noodle thing, but a Parmigiano-Reggiano might have been the actual build around, right, yeah. So it was really inspiring to see, and some of them, all of them were good. They wouldn't have been there if they weren't. I mean yeah, All of them were good, but some of them were hard to judge, because you don't want to compare against each other, you want to judge the plate for what it is Individually, yeah, but.
Speaker 1:But it's really hard knowing that man, that was good, but that was good too. You can't help yourself right. So because you're eating them all at the same time on a limited time frame, you almost have to. Kind of your palate wants to compete and I think education or experience with that would subside. But what an experience I got from that. I think I got more inspired and had more fun than the damn chefs that were winning.
Speaker 2:I know, I mean that's the thing you have more fun than the damn chefs that were winning. I know I mean, that's the thing you know. I start every World Food Championships. I've been with it now probably eight years and I start pretty much everyone from the stage basically reminding people this is the world's biggest family reunion. Yes, this is the biggest international cooking competition, but it really is a family reunion. These people may not see each other all year long, but they stay in touch all year and then as soon as they hit the ground at WFC, it's like no time has passed. They're right back. I have basically like an adopted mom and Donna Collins the jelly queen.
Speaker 2:Everybody has those stories. It's the only competition you're ever going to see where we had a barbecue team one year. None of their protein showed up In other sports. If their gear didn't show up, sorry, you don't get to play. All the other barbecue teams get rallied around, took all their extra protein brought and dropped it over to them so they could compete. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:It doesn't happen in any other way it's like the camaraderie family. And that's the kitchen life.
Speaker 3:It is more, it represents a true kitchen, sure it does?
Speaker 1:I mean the restaurant across the street. If they run out of something, I go over there, they come here. We ask it's just natural, it's how we get by, right? What I think, mark, is that the way this is going and the way I see it, from my perspective, it's exactly what the culinary world needs, because it's in a lull and right now, everybody's redundantly doing the same thing and there's nothing to spark. And I think, no matter what level of chef you're at, if you don't go here and watch, even if you're at the highest level right, I'm at a pretty high level as far as what I do now as a chef. Right, I'm not talking about accolades or anything like that, I'm just talking about I own multiple restaurants. You know I have my shit going on to where I don't necessarily have to cook, I guess, do I? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But bottom line is, I have people underneath me, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:Well, you built a business out of it. You're not the kitchener Right.
Speaker 1:I have two kitchen brigades underneath me, and I'm still cooking every night too. But the thing is, when I go there, I'm watching people that are just coming up in their dream.
Speaker 3:Some of them, some of them, some of them, some of them.
Speaker 1:Some of them have been there, but some of them, a lot of them, are still working on coming up in their dream. Well, you had what?
Speaker 3:20 23-year-old like kind of savants in the industry. That were their leading teams we did, I mean we had two years ago.
Speaker 2:Three years ago now. The winner was an 18-year-old kid who didn't even know he was going to compete. He ends up winning a last chance qualifier two weeks ahead of wfc. He was only coming to volunteer, right about a last chance qualifier, qualifies, goes into the chef category of all categories as an 18 year old. Wins the category, blowing out serious competition. Goes to final table and in South Carolina, wins final table. Becomes the world food champion as a barely 19-year-old.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right Next thing you know he's on Next Level Chef with Gordon Ramsay and making jokes about how old Gordon Ramsay is. That's what this does. And then last year's final table, which was probably the most international we ever had, was probably the most international we ever had. The final four was a Michelin star chef from the UK, a 30-plus year executive chef from Australia, a phenom out of France and a little pastry chef out of Galveston, texas.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:Everybody thought it was going to be the exec chef from Australia, who had won the whole thing the previous year. He was looking to repeat, or this Michelin star chef out of the UK. They all lose to this little pastry chef from Galveston, texas.
Speaker 3:That's the beauty, that's the sport of it, because you don't know who the champion is going to be, and to watch these people who didn't have the opportunity.
Speaker 1:It's almost like watching America's Got Talent or what's the other one American Idol you see these people with such talent. They just never had a platform, and this thing gives a platform, and that's what I mean by I have my platform.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you don't have a prequel. It's not like you have to have a culinary degree to compete correct.
Speaker 2:We have home cooks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so people are just home Home cooks to Michelin chefs.
Speaker 1:We have it all and that's what's fun about it, and sitting up there judging that, watching this. Inspired the hell out of me to make me remember that I may have my platforms but honestly I could get beat out by a damn person who's just learning how to cook two years ago.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's that easy. It's cool and that's what inspired me to come back and get my shit together, and that's what I did when I walked back in here. You know what I mean. It made me look at the whole restaurant industry. So, no matter what level of chef you are or how high you are, you're going to take something from this place. It's amazing and it's someone like Thomas Keller could go in there and take from it, because he would be inspired, because he's a giver, he gives back to this community.
Speaker 3:Yeah, true.
Speaker 1:And that's the format you would give back more than anything. It's just a great thing, and what you guys are doing is it's pivotal right now. It's pivotal right. That's a good word. It is, it is pivotal.
Speaker 3:But I think for like, the rest of the industry that's out there that doesn't know about it because, again, we didn't learn as much about the process to get there. So break down, like what's the process? Like, where you have these qualifiers to get the golden ticket which we talked about, how do people find out about it? Like, how does that process work from like, say, joe Schmo sitting at home right now and is like, oh shit, I want to compete. What do they need to do?
Speaker 2:So easiest way you can go into the worldfoodchampionshipscom. That's the website. It will list qualifiers. Now, what a qualifier is? It can be a sanctioned event that someone else is putting on, but they have been sanctioned by us to give away a golden ticket. The only way to compete at WFC is to have a golden ticket. It's like the Willy Wonka food sport. So you get this golden ticket. Now you can go and compete, but these qualifiers happen all year long, all around the world. I think globally. Last year we had about 800 qualifiers.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:And each one is different. One can be a burger challenge, one can be a pasta challenge, one can be a barbecue cook-off. It really depends on we take a look at the competitions as they apply to be sanctioned. We go and we break down. All right, who's judging? What's your process? What's the legitimacy of what's happening here, and then now we give out golden tickets. This year we're going to take a whole new approach and be much more proactive and more of a putting on our own farm system. That's one of the things that Mike Eaton talks about a lot now is being that American idol of food sport and really going out and putting our own qualifiers out there. So we're working through the state fairs Because if you look at the state fair, that's the history of food sport.
Speaker 3:Competitive cooking started with that blue ribbon like I said earlier, your grandmother won the blueberry pie, the blueberry pie right.
Speaker 2:So now we want to build out full-blown cooking competitions at these state fairs, because they're all over the country, they're actually all over the world, and now we can have this feeder network, a farm system, home.
Speaker 1:Homegrown organic?
Speaker 3:Yeah, homegrown stuff, yeah, well, you have to kind of bring some of that in-house to control, like once you're growing to that point, which you guys are. So I think a lot more people know about this next year than they did this year and the year before, and that's the whole point of it. And to be a part of it was pretty cool because we got to come and podcast at the event. So we got to meet all the chefs and then we had chefs from that event come for your birthday and come cook for you.
Speaker 1:So we are in contact already. So our team, we're already in contact with a lot of the chefs. We already have a community working on our end.
Speaker 3:It's amazing.
Speaker 1:We've become friends with these guys and ladies and we're having a good time with them and I look forward to the next year. Already Is Slated pretty much to be in the same place.
Speaker 2:We're about 70% sure it's going to be in Indy again. Okay, that is all this whole part of the negotiation. But I will tell you this wherever we go, we're probably going to be a long-term home. So I think my click my heels. I'm waiting to hear back.
Speaker 3:You have the shoes for it. I got the shoes for it.
Speaker 2:I'm putting all in. I'd love for it to stay in Indy it was a tremendous host city. It was Unbelievable From our first time being involved.
Speaker 3:It was great.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I think the event went well, no matter where it is, yeah Right, but I think the whole involvement with Indy as well according to the airport, all the way through the whole situation made the event feel great, unless that's how it feels everywhere it has to inside Indy was special, indy was special, it was a different feeling.
Speaker 2:The whole vibe was special.
Speaker 3:Well, they get it, I think, a lot of the like anybody out there in economic development, when you're trying to do revitalization and pushing for those efforts, like they lose the aspect of the hospitality and the food and bringing people in for food and beverage. And you know I mean fallen short in our area a few times on that and you know they. They did a great job. So I think if you stay there, it's fun, but people can keep up with it on the website and repetition builds.
Speaker 2:Repetition builds if you look at what they're doing there at indy between sports corp visit indy. They've had everything. Yeah, they've had the super bowl, the final four, the olympic swim trials, taylor. They just keep bringing in more. So they want food, sport, they want to be the quintessential source for food sport, and that's WFC.
Speaker 3:And be a home and it works out. It is. It's fun, but I think that the people that get involved with it it is more attainable than you think, which I think some people think like I can't do that, but anybody can come and join and actually try and get the golden ticket for this.
Speaker 2:You really can. I know we're trying to get it in Virginia.
Speaker 3:It's very cool.
Speaker 1:So that's something we're working on. Proposing as well is having a qualifier type of situation here in Hampton Roads, because coastal Virginia has some of the best chefs. On the East Coast we have some of the best food, best resources, best indigenous product.
Speaker 1:We have the bay all the way out to the mountains, right, and what we don't have, though, is really a national platform here in Hampton Roads for some reason or another. So, whether it be the Bayard Foundation or Michelin, we have quality chefs and restaurants that could easily participate in those programs, but for some reason, the program isn't here. We would like to see that with the world food. So Awesome work, mark. Let me, for all yous who I know you all have been sitting at home right now or wherever you are listening to this and you're chewing your nails wondering about the red shoes, because I told you, if you paid attention long enough.
Speaker 1:You sat here with us If you know, mark, like I know, mark, I'm going to tell you what the best part of the World Food Championships is the final moments when the chefs are running with their product to deliver it to the final judge table, literally down a red carpet with the big buzzer and the big numbers and the people clapping people dropping, falling over and tripping and yeah, this dude right here carries his own red carpet on his feet everywhere he goes in representation of the red carpet experience.
Speaker 1:So when he's talking World Food Championships, he's on the red carpet right now, right here. So that's what it's all about. You have to experience this red carpet scenario. That's what I'm going to tell you. You like that?
Speaker 3:I like that. I don't know if that's his story it absolutely works. I made it up 100%.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it works. But I told you I'd reward you for being such good listeners, for staying with us, and I'm here to deliver folks. I'm here to deliver, okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm proud of you for tying that in See the emotion built in. I do. I saw the whole crescendo. Oh, do you want to weigh in on where your shoes came from?
Speaker 2:You know, it's the whole thing about my suits, my shoes, the whole garb is. I love to talk, I love to be on stage, I love to do all things, but the suits speak louder than I can ever suit, so that's a whole other thing about world food. Look at me now Look at me now Everybody wants to know what suits I'm wearing. I wear a different suit every single day, every time.
Speaker 2:Every single World Food Championship is a different one. It all started thanks to Donna Collins, the Jelly Queen, who asked me for her very first biscuit and championship. Would I host it and would I wear a hot pink suit?
Speaker 3:Oh, so she requested the crazy suit. She requested the suit.
Speaker 2:That's where it all happened, and that's where it all started, because I wore that suit.
Speaker 1:Now you're wearing red carpets everywhere. You stop, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I wore that suit as like oh, it's good to go now.
Speaker 3:I like it, that's funny.
Speaker 2:So now it's all a different jacket, a different suit, every single time.
Speaker 3:You want to reveal any of your like secret places. You get these suits or no? Well, you know this one.
Speaker 2:This is one of mine.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's got your name in it, so my name in it. This is one of the ones that I picked out, and designed with our company, uncommon Chef. They have.
Speaker 2:They have their own tuxedo line, so I've designed some suits with them.
Speaker 3:But the craziest place that I get my stuff from is literally Amazon. I search crazy weird suit coats.
Speaker 2:It's a wrap, comes up every time yeah, I'm gonna end this with this good note here, man, what you're doing phenomenal.
Speaker 1:The best part about it all is you're right here in Hampton Roads with us, so you're bringing something. Like I said, this area offers some of the best culinary reach out there is and he, mark, is from right here, he lives right here in Norfolk correct? Yeah, and my restaurant's in Norfolk. I have one in Chesapeake. We met here and now he's a big producing part of the world food championships, food sport, yep, and he's right here from hampton roads, so I'm honored to know you like that and I'm honored that you didn't have to travel here.
Speaker 1:We live in the same town. We know each other.
Speaker 2:Yes, right down the road it's right down the street and you know it's so funny because I go to to luce and norfolk all the time and it's, it's a it's. There's those spots that we have here that people don't realize would hold up against anything anywhere else. Sure, we really have those spots here in Hampton Roads.
Speaker 1:My job, my goal, when I have my restaurants here, is to be as good or better than any place I go in the world to bring it here. That's my goal. That's what I want.
Speaker 3:We have a lot of talent here and I think it's underestimated, which is why I mean we want to bring competition, we want to try and build that community here which is something that we will do over the next couple of years because it deserves it.
Speaker 3:I mean coming up in the restaurant industry. You have the same background, you know food you and we have some amazing fucking chefs in this area. So to see it represented and hopefully some people from here will be inspired and show up and try and, you know, get in, get the golden ticket and represent, Because I don't think you've had many people from Virginia or this area, some in northern.
Speaker 2:Virginia. Really, only one from this area ever necessarily went to WFC and competed.
Speaker 3:Okay, so that's a challenge to everyone in the 757. Show up Sure.
Speaker 2:And you know, we're probably wink, wink, nudge, nudge, going to unveil some new categories next year.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, I'm excited about that.
Speaker 1:Well, we're excited. Where can they find you?
Speaker 3:I know you plugged it a little bit.
Speaker 1:Give it a shout out, Give it a big shout. Where can they really go to get on board with this program?
Speaker 2:You can always follow the World Food Championships on Instagram, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, so it's on all the channels just World Food Championships. And then you can follow me at Mark Conway WFC.
Speaker 3:Perfect.
Speaker 1:All right perfect.
Speaker 3:And there also is a mixology portion. So we're going to have to do a separate episode for the bartenders, because there is a way to get involved and win a lot of fucking money, which I think people will love. So we'll talk about that in the next one. The veterans, all that stuff.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of categories that are not even touched here in this conversation. But, Mark, thank you very much for being here. Thanks for having us involved. Absolutely From Burhan's perspective the whole crew learned a lot. We bound really good that weekend that was great. It was just a really good time.
Speaker 3:So, fun.
Speaker 1:We experienced where to go and where not to go, eating Indy.
Speaker 3:That's a story for another episode as well, y'all. Okay, we're not going to talk about that right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, but Indy was amazing. What you're doing is amazing. Your team is amazing. You made us feel more than home and we look forward to working with you in the future. So, burnt Hands, perspective perspective, give them a follow. Definitely give us a follow, subscribe to the whole nation and we'll see you out there. Ciao, for now.
