Cooking with Beer and Drinking Lots More...

Ommegang Hop Chef Competition

Union Transfer

I seriously was on a roll last summer with the food events. I went to so many, and I had such a great time. One that I was particularly looking forward to was the Ommegang Hop Chef competition. The way it works is that chefs from different cities compete to win their city, and then all get invited to Ommegang brewery to compete for the national title. They do this while having to create a dish using an Ommegang beer, as well as a beer pairing with the food that they created. The year prior saw the Philly winner, one George Sabatino, win the national title as well. Pretty awesome stuff. Unforunately, my fiancé couldn’t make it with me that day, but one of my good friends was able to step it and come with me, and we had a great time together eating and drinking quite a bit. 

There were a ton of great chefs at the event this year; the Petruce Brothers of Petruce et. Al., Jenny Choplin of Taproom on 19th, Ben Puchowicz of Cheu Noodle Bar, Jeremy Nolen of Brauhaus Schmitz, Townsend Wentz of Townsend, James Kengott of Strangeloves, Travis Masar of Sampan, just to name a few. All of the food that was cooked was seriously amazing. I think all of the chefs did a great job not only using the ingredients, but pairing their food really well with different Ommegang beers. We had just about every beer they offer throughout the night, and they were all delicious. We had dishes like a raw oyster with a yuzu and beer vinaigrette, lamb ribs with a beer barbeque sauce, a seared scallop with beer reduction sauce, pan fried bao bun stuffed with duck that was cooked in beer, an amazing hamachi crudo with a beer aioli, peaches and some spices and a 5 spice meat combo with grain mustard.

Ben Puchowicz won, and although it was very tough for me to choose between his bao bun and the crudo from Petruce, I think he deserved to win. His dish was amazing and something so incredibly different. This is just another amazing food event that you can experience in Philadelphia every summer. Check it out next time it comes around. Cheers!