Portland chef Matt Ginn came oh-so-close to becoming the Food Network’s “Chopped Champion” Tuesday night, but the judges eliminated him in the entrée round.
In the end, Adriana Urbina, a Venezuelan chef who hosts pop-up tasting dinners in New York, took home the top prize of $50,000.
Chef contestants on Chopped Champions get mystery baskets of ingredients from which they must create original dishes against the clock for a panel of judges. The chef with the least appealing dish in each round is “chopped” until just one chef remains. Ginn, who presides over the kitchen at Evo Kitchen + Bar in Portland, won $10,000 on “Chopped” in July, on an episode titled “Room for ‘Shrooms.” He was invited back in the fall to compete against other winners for the Chopped Champions grand prize.
In the finale, Ginn competed against two other New England chefs, Evan Hennessey of Stages at One Washington in Dover, New Hampshire, and Tatiana Rosana, the executive chef at The Envoy Hotel in Boston. The fourth chef in the competition, Urbina of the pop-up restaurant Tepuy, won the Chopped Champion title.
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