For the third year in a row, a dining services team from the University of Lynchburg has won “Best Entrée” at Jubilee Family Development Center’s Top Chef cooking contest. The annual fundraiser pits local chefs against each other in what’s described as an “interactive, multicourse cooking competition between some of the best chefs in the Hill City.”
For the competition, held at Jubilee on Saturday, Aug. 29, Chef John Barker and his team — Burton Dining Hall Manager Benuel Hostetter and Line Server Delia Newton — prepared the winning entrée: Korean fried chicken with creamy coconut rice and sesame cucumber salad.
Each of the four teams in the competition prepared an appetizer and entrée. Lynchburg was the only university represented, and this was the fourth year that dining services has been invited to participate in Top Chef.
The team’s winning entrée will be served at lunchtime in Burton Dining Hall on Friday, Sept. 18.
“Big thank you to Delia and Benuel for agreeing to be there,” Barker said. “They both know I’m going to push, but I just can’t say enough about them.
“It’s always an honor to compete. It’s always an honor to win, but just … having anything to do with the Jubilee Family Development Center is the biggest honor. The work they do is so fundamental in our community.
“There are few things around here that feel as worthy as that, to put time, money, and effort into, so it’s just so touching to be a part of it.”
