Too many cooks normally spoil the broth but not in the case of Monteith’s.
This year’s Monteith’s Beer and Wild Food Challenge will be even more hotly contested than in the past with seven chefs competing instead of the usual five.
Monteith’s head judge, Kerry Tyack has been assessing 27 semi-finalists from an original 100 plus entry list over the past two weeks. Traditionally the semi-finalist list is whittled down to five finalists but Tyack says the standard of this year’s entrants made the challenge of doing so extremely difficult.
“2010 marks a watershed for the competition showing that many chefs really do now understand the concept of food and beer matching. We are now at a stage where we’re not just looking for good matches, we’re looking for finesse. There’s plenty of good matches, so to stand out chefs really needed to be showing an x factor with their matches. Included in the seven finalists are some really simple dishes that are remarkable for that reason as well as some really complex dishes that are included because of they have taken a much more adventurous approach and still managed to pull it off.”
Tyack says reducing the semi-finalists from 27 to five proved impossible this year because the difference between them in terms of quality was so marginal.
“It would have been a travesty to have left out some excellent dishes which is we decided to increase the number of finalists by two, this year making seven, however it could easily have been ten!”
The seven finalists who will compete in the cook-off at the Auckland Seafood School in Auckland on Monday August 23 are:

• Bangalore Polo Club, Christchurch
• Peppertree, Coromandel
• Redoubt, Te Awamutu
• The Porch, Waihi Beach
• Uncle Mike’s BBQ, Wanaka
• Vinnies, Auckland
• Watershed, Christchurch.

The overall winner will be announced the same day of the cook-off at approximately 2pm.