The fourth annual Battle of Chefs, a live cooking competition, will take place in front of Dunning’s Market & Deli in downtown Flossmoor on the evening of Saturday, July 27.
Proceeds will be donated to the iCanDream Center, a nonprofit organization in Tinley Park that empowers kids with autism and intellectual disabilities and helps neurodivergent young adults transition into adulthood.
(Nick Ulanowski/H-F Chronicle)
The two teams at the Battle of the Chefs will have the same surprise batch of seven ingredients that they both open simultaneously. Both teams have exactly 45 minutes to cook a dish using all of the ingredients. A panel of judges determines the winning team.
“Forty-five minutes is actually a long time,” said Maureen Mader, owner of Dunning’s Market and event organizer. “In the middle, you’re like, ‘Oh, I have all this time left.’ Only at the end, when you’re plating everything that everybody gets all freaked out.”
Battle of the Chefs 2024 will feature live music from Soul2Soul and possibly a DJ, Mader said. Nico Martinez, an artist with autism in Flossmoor, is set to auction off a piece of original artwork.
Ticket-holding attendees will receive signature cocktails and gourmet appetizer platters prepared by four of the competing chefs. There will be a bar set up outside where attendees can purchase additional drinks.
Mader said she anticipates friendly competition as her team, Team Dunning’s, will face off again against Team 3v3. At last year’s Battle of the Chefs, Team Dunning’s won for the first time which caused her team to immediately erupt in celebration the moment the winners were announced.
Team Dunning’s includes Mader, her nephew Matt Meschede and Won Kim, who’s been in chef competitions on the Food Network and owns Kimski, a Korean-Polish fusion restaurant in Chicago.
The other team, Team 3v3, is led by Chef Jerome Brown, a personal chef who has appeared on Food Network, and celebrity chefs Ricky Simpson Jr. and Sondra Rhodes.
Zachary Sanders, a 26-year-old South Suburban College student, is a former student at the iCanDreamCenter. A few years ago, he got a job as a store clerk at Zone Comics & Games, a comic shop in downtown Homewood, as a part of an iCanDream Center internship program. He’s since aged out of the program but has remained employed by Zone.
Working at Zone, Sanders said he’s formed long-lasting friendships with the store’s owner, Alex Stritar, and some of the regular customers. He’ll often come to Zone on his days off to play “Magic: The Gathering” on the back tables.
“I owe it all to the iCanDream Center – where I am now,” Sanders said. “I love what I do. It’s grown into a passion.”
Before his internship at Zone, Sanders learned other life skills from the iCanDream Center. He said the center took him and other young adult students to a car dealership to teach them how to buy their first car.
In another “outing,” which is like a field trip, the center staff showed them how to hunt for apartments, Sanders said.
Battle of the Chef tickets can be pre-ordered on Eventbrite.com for $75 apiece.
