NE ACF Regional Competition 2012

NE Regional ACF Student Competition

Team Members: Maria Provencher, Team Captain and Dessert, Brandon Show-Entree, Ryan Contraski-Fish Course, Peerce VanMeter-Salad and Jason Wells-Alternate.

We won the WV cook-off to represent WV in the NE Regional ACF Competition held in Niagara Falls, NY April 27-May1st.

Competition began with the display of Cold Restaurant Platter. We did a “Spring Rabbit Medley”. “We were very pleased and the platter got a lot of praise from the judges and participants. It takes an extreme amount of work but only counts for 10% of the total point scale.

The next phase was the skills phase. As usual our students performed like professionals. I couldn’t have been more proud, especially standing there with coaches and students form some of the biggest and best culinary schools in the country. We behaved and performed even better than I expected. It made me very proud to stand there as their coach.

The final phase was the Four Course Meal. The performance in the arena was immaculate; Chef McCue (Assistant Coach) and I could only observe from outside the kitchen but as far as we could see the team looked fantastic. They even finished a little early and composed themselves to begin taking the plates to the judges at the exact time. It was impressive, their composure was something to behold! Three plates of each course were taken to the tasting judges and one plate of each course was taken to a display table. When they arrived at the display table there wasn’t a student or coach in the event that wasn’t standing around our table with awe and amazement! I can honestly say there wasn’t another table there that got the attention ours did. I was sure of that since I had watched the reactions very closely on each team. It was another proud moment.

Afterwards our critique was given to us by all but one of the judges that had to leave, and it was incredible. The only negative thing said was the fact that the desert was so good they wanted more of the pistachio ice cream on it! We walked away feeling very, very positive!

The awards banquet came the following day and needless to say we were very excited. Unfortunately our name was called out a little earlier than we expected. Third place again? Bronze medals? We expected first or at the very least second. The critique was absolutely outstanding! How could we end up in third place? Goes to show, you just never know about these things.  We were disappointed but in retrospect we should be very proud, and we are. We actually beat Johnson Wales! One of the oldest and largest culinary schools in the country! The only schools that did beat us were from Cincinnati, an incredible school and their coach was the previous National president of the American Culinary Federation! And Delhi, NY the school that has won the past several years, and I won’t go on about who their coach was but many of the teams and coaches felt that his position with the national ACF office should have made it a conflict of interest. For some reason this has been overlooked for several years.

Regardless of the frustration with the final results, our team realizes what a fantastic journey it’s been. We came together as a team, worked hard endless hours month after month and had an incredible time doing so. There are very few things in this profession that offer the opportunity to work as a cohesive unit and strive for the common goal of excellence and perfection. After a few days of disappointment I believe I can speak for all involved when I say that we were victorious in every aspect of the word. For a school of our size to compete with the likes of nationally recognized schools and come home “placing at all” is commendable, and I can say that I personally feel as though we took on the giants and won!  I’m pretty sure our team members now feel the same way after a few days of rest and realization. I won’t be licking any wounds, I’ll just begin thinking of how we might be able to improve just a little more each time we compete and get a little closer to perfection!

Jay R. Mahoney CEC
Coach/Instructor
Pierpont Culinary Academy
1201 Locust Avenue
Fairmont, WV 26554