By David Rogers. February 7, 2012. BLOWING ROCK -- People were everywhere on the premises Tuesday night, as 100 diners converged on Crippens Country Inn & Restaurant for Fire on the Rock "Battle #3", featuring the considerable talents of Chef Hunter Hallmark of Restaurant G at Gideon Ridge (Blowing Rock), and Chef Monty Webber of The Painted Fish Cafe (Banner Elk). Photos by Amanda Fife Lugenbell

Big cheers went up for both, but in the end it was Webber moving on to the quarterfinals of North Carolina's premier competition dining event.  Webber will face the winner of February 28th's "battle" between Vidalia's (Boone) Sam Ratchford and Cafe Portofino's Matt Martin.

Battle #3 between Hallmark and Webber may have been the most challenging to date for the 2012 Fire on the Rock competition dining event. Both chefs told Blowing Rock News afterwards that the secret ingredient, Guinea Fowl from Ashley Farms, was challenging to serve across three different dishes each.

Tonight's six courses included: 

• FIRST COURSE (Hallmark) -- Guinea Fowl Flautas, with picuilla salsa fresco, cotisa cheese, and cilantro oil
• SECOND COURSE (Webber) -- Nicoise Spring Roll, with Guinea Fowl confit, haricot vert, kalamata olives, grape tomato, roasted potato, baby spinach, red wine--anchovy viniagrette
• THIRD COURSE (Hallmark) -- Rich Guinea Fowl Rissotto, with mozzarella, balsamic vinegar, brown butter, and porcini mushrooms
• FOURTH COURSE (Webber) -- "Spaghetti & Meatballs", featuring Guinea Fowl meatballs, duo of sweet potato angel hair, agrodole sauce
• FIFTH COURSE (Hallmark) -- Guinea Fowl Surf & Turf,  featuring Guinea Fowl sausage, purple potato cake, scallop, asparagus salad, and guinea fowl jus
• SIXTH COURSE (Webber) -- Guinea Fowl Stuffed Beignet, with bing cherry ice cream, brandied caramel sauce

This was one of those "opinions are like noses: everybody's got one" type of evenings. Listening to conversations at nearby tables, to hear the different public diner evaluations of the dishes, revealed little consistency in opinion. There was virtually no agreement, and both the public and professional/guest judges' rankings reflected the disparities in thinking (and taste).  The professional/guest judges' scoring seemed to be particularly more severe than in last week's battles #1 and #2.

SCORING

As an event sponsor, Blowing Rock News was invited to participate Tuesday night as one of the three professional/guest judges, so in the spirit of full disclosure we are reporting our rankings (above, last column on the right) of the various dishes. Our miscellaneous notes:

• Guinea Fowl Flautas -- Pretty tasty starter dish, particularly the salsa.
• Nicoise Spring Rolls -- You never know where the professional judges are going to be in the order of distribution. In Battle #3, we were the 100th diner (out of 100) being served.  Our spring rolls arrived without any hint of the fowl, so we had to give zeros for secret ingredient creativity and secret ingredient execution, even though we figured out pretty quickly what the problem PROBABLY was. The chef later confirmed our speculation, admitting that one of the challenges of the competition is apportioning the allocated food products evenly over every plate. Except for there being none of the featured ingredient, this dish was pretty good and could have scored as high as 2nd, 3rd or 4th in our rankings if it had not been shortchanged by the time our plates were served.
• Rissotto -- We were decidedly non-plussed by this dish. The Guinea Fowl seemed to get lost in the rissotto. Felt and tasted very starchy.  If the spring rolls had included the featured ingredient, this would have been far and away our least favorite dish of the evening.
• Spaghetti & Meatballs -- In our opinion, this was the first dish of the evening to live up to the high standards of Fire on the Rock for creativity and quality.'
• Guinea Fowl Surf & Turf -- Our #1 dish of the evening, by far. Creatively presented, really felt and tasted like a fine dining entree.  Only tweak might be to add a little more tang/flavor to the sausage.
• Guinea Fowl Beignet -- Offering up a meat, poultry or fish product as a dessert is always a challenge, and more often than not a high risk proposition.  The successful dishes usually include the meat product as some sort of creative accessory to a stupendous traditional dessert, such as ice cream, cheesecake or a torte.  Last year, The Painted Fish team led by Tom Jankovich knocked the cover off the ball by turning tiny pieces of ground pork (the secret ingredient) into "candied pork" that looked like raisins on top of "black peppered ice cream."  The Guinea Fowl stuffed inside the deep-fried dough was neither as creative or awe-inspiring.  It was saved by the powdered sugar sprinkled on top of the pastry, and the ice cream on the side. Without any one of those two elements, this dish would have fallen flat for us.

Hallmark told Blowing Rock News afterwards, "I was not excited about guinea fowl, but we did our best. It just wasn't good enough today."

In speaking of the challenges of the evening, Hallmark was candid in saying, "We only had 10 guinea fowls with which to serve (three dishes to) 100 people. So the hardest thing was stretching (the product) out so everyone had guinea fowl in every dish.  The other major challenge is utilizing it throughout the dish and making sure it stays moist. It dries out pretty quickly."

"I came into this thinking that if we got a savory ingredient we were not going to try to do a dessert," Hallmark said, and he stayed true to his word. "Guinea fowl is just not a dessert."

"I want to add our best wishes to Painted Fish for competing in the next round," concluded Hallmark.  "If they are going to beat us, we want them to go all the way!"

"This was a tough ingredient," Webber told Blowing Rock News after the results were announced, making his Painted Fish team the winner. "Both teams did a great job of competing.  We both executed, and we also had a lot of fun doing it," he said as he received a big "smack" (kiss) on the top of his bald head from Painted Fish chef/owner Tom Jankovich.

"My biggest challenge was that guinea fowl can be very dry if you don't cook it long enough. You can't treat it like a chicken breast, because it is more of a dark meat. So low and slow cooking is the preferred method, to keep it correct," Webber explained. "Therefore, I did a confit, poaching the guinea fowl in olive oil for about three hours. A confit is cooking a protein like duck or guinea fowl in its own fat.  Since we didn't have a lot of fat with a guinea fowl, I chose to use olive oil.  I used the confit for both the spring roll, as well as the beignet."

"I enjoy Fire on the Rock immensely," Webber shared. "I love to come out here and meet with chefs that I don't get to see on a daily basis. It was fun for me to lead a team for the first time this year. In the past I worked with Tom Jankovich, on his team. It was a great learning experience for my team members. The takeaways from tonight include learning how to count better, so we have enough product for all of the plates served, and better time management. Some of the stuff we did was a little more labor intensive that it probably should have been for either the planning or faster service."

On Wednesday night (Feb. 8), Fire on the Rock "Battle #4" gets underway with Bistro Roca's (Blowing Rock) Michael Foreman pitted against Hearthstone Tavern's (Banner Elk) Josh Grogan in what is expected to be a battle royale.  Fire on the Rock host and emcee Jimmy Crippen reports that Wednesday night's event is almost sold out, with very few seats left.  

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