- December 26, 2024
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The first time I interviewed Jason Hall, chef at the Hammock Dunes Club, he had just passed a gruling eight-day cooking exam to become the 67th Certified Master Chef. That was in 2012, and he told me that his next goal was to make the American Culinary Federation’s Culinary Team USA and to compete in the Culinary Olympics. He made the team in 2013 and with two years until the Olympics, he and the culinary team recently returned from Luxemburg, where they competed in the at the 12th-annual Villeroy & Boch Culinary World Cup where they earned two gold medals and the the highest score in the cold-food competition.
The team placed third overall in the world against national chef teams from 29 other countries. George Castaneda, Culinary Team USA member and executive chef of Sodexo North America in Franklin, Tennessee, won the Villeroy & Boch Culinary World Cup in individual cooking becoming the first American chef to ever win gold as an individual.
“We’re extremely proud of him; he’s a massive talent and extremely humble,” Hall said Monday at a private tasting held at the Hammock Dunes Club. “We always felt like we were gelling more and more, but when we got there, our hot food was the smoothest we had every done it, and it showed just how well we worked together and how far we had come.”
I felt humbled to get an invite to the event which preceded a question-and-answer session with members of the Hammock Dunes Club.
Myself, along with three other writers and members of the American Culinary Federation had the extreme pleasure of tasting four of the dishes that were presented in Luxemburg and the opportunity to talk with the team candidly about their experience.
“We’re probably the youngest team in history,” Hall said before the courses came. “I think we proved ourselves in Luxemburg.”
Going in to the tasting, I was prepared to eat things I had never heard of before, fancy classic dishes that tantalized the taste buds. Of the four dishes presented, there were two that I couldn’t get enough of. This first was the entre, presented by Hall. The dish, a horseradish crusted tenderloin with sweetbread sausage, carrot puree, Brussel sprout and celery root-black truffle presse, aimed to show utilization of the entire animal. The sausage was a mix of ground trim, raw sweetbread, smoked julienne tongue and poached sweetbread.
But my ultimate favorite was, of course, the dessert dish. Presented by Corey Siegal, 23, the youngest ever member of the team, the dessert plate was a play on the dish presented at the competition, including crème fraiche cremeux with a salted caramel sauce, bread pudding carpaccio, apple pie filling with a brioche doughnut and red current sorbet over gingersnap.
“It’s a really awesome experience to go to battle with these guys against other countries,” Siegel said with a huge smile on his face as the table of tasters tried not to lick their plates clean.
But this is just the halfway mark. For the next two years, the team will be working toward bringing home a medal from the 2016 Culinary Olympics in Germany.
“All of us have full-time jobs, so it’s not uncommon for us to stay long after our staffs go home,” Hall said when asked about preparation for competition. “I’ve literally stayed here until the next day working on a dish and that’s just the commitment we all have.”
But unlike other countries competing, the USA Culinary Team is not government-funded and must fundraise. Because proteins and dairy in other countries have different fat content, the team must bring much of their own product to work with for competition. Bringing with him all the beef and dairy to make 110 servings of his dish in Luxemburg, Hall’s luggage fee rang up to $900. To help offset expenses, the team has sponsors. But locally, the members of Hammock Dunes Club wanted to do something to help their favorite club chef. At a Taste of the Team fundraiser held Tuesday night at the club, the team was given a donation check of $30,000.
