Yesterday, 12 Director Andrew Dickson brought in three black truffles. He had found them in the woods the previous weekend. Well, a dog found them in the woods, Andrew just accepted them from a professional truffle hunter. With almost half the group off site, touring our new client’s HQ, Andrew and Byron decided to host a little competition:

Iron Chef 12: Challenge Truffle

We had one hour (we ended up taking 3) to prepare 2 dishes. Each team of 4 was given $12 for ingredients (there’s a fine line between “We want you to be resourceful” and “We don’t like spending money”).

My name is Alex. I was on the winning team. I’m pretty sure no one from the opposing team will read this, so I’m totally comfortable saying that it was a shut out. We had three courses. The first course was a truffle corn soup made by Yi-Fan Lu. Next up, a truffle mac and cheese tag-teamed by me and Jed Heuer. Third was Anastasia Aizman’s truffle ice cream. All were delicious. We went 66 cents over budget.

The other team put a piece of bacon on a piece of toast, covered it with a piece of cheese and added a slice of truffle. They went 3 dollars over budget. It tasted fine, but seriously? That’s what you’re bringing to the table?

Sometimes failing harder is really, really embarrassing.