August 11, 2026

Chef Showdown celebrates ten years

Under the stewardship of Charlottean Heidi Billotto, the competition has showcased the state’s chefs and farmers

Heidi Billotto with regional round culinary judges Matthew Krenz, Savanna Broder, Mauricio Haircaya, and Luis Rojas. Photo courtesy

by MIchelle Boudin

Heidi Billotto may be known as the patron saint of North Carolina’s chefs and farmers, but she started out wanting to be a teacher. The 69-year-old moved to Charlotte in 1976 to study early childhood education at Queens University, and says she had no idea that passion would lead to another – and to a life she never imagined, full of food, fun and a whole lot of flavor.

For years, she owned a cooking school and sold expensive cookware.

“My biggest competition was the Williams Sonoma catalog because there was nothing in Charlotte that sold the high-end culinary equipment,” she says. “I was teaching adults and children how to cook and I loved it, so I put my teaching skills to work, and I did something I loved and that is what I have done ever since.”

Much of Billotto’s unorthodox career path has been a roll of the dice. Perhaps the biggest chance of all was when she created what is now the premiere chef’s competition in the state. Billotto launched the NCRLA (North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association) Chef Showdown 10 years ago, hoping to highlight local ingredients and the farms where they came from, along with the top chefs in the state. It started very simply when a leader in the hospitality field asked her to plan a one-night competition.

“It was at a time when all the TV food competition shows were really popular and I called 12 chefs that I knew in the state and we ended up with 16 of them and 200 people attended,” she says. “In the end, somebody was the chef of the year and somebody was the pastry chef of the year.”

She never imagined it would grow to what it is today. The NCRLA Chef Showdown has become the state’s largest culinary and mixology competition, directly benefitting the state’s hospitality industry.

“Every year, we added something new,” Billotto says. “First it was just a chef’s competition and then we added in rounds of mixology competition and brought North Carolina distilleries into that. And every year since, we’ve added in something to grow it a little bit bigger a little step at a time. This year was our biggest year yet.”

The Showdown now runs from May to September, with multiple rounds of competition held across the state culminating in the championship, a dinner that will be held in Durham in September. The culinary competitors this season range from chefs who have earned James Beard and Michelin nods to those who are just starting out in the industry.

NCRLA Best Chef Showdown is designed to promote the use of local ingredients. Photo courtesy

The chefs are allowed to make anything they want, but they have to use as many local ingredients as possible, including products, proteins, and produce. Part of the final score is a count of how many North Carolina things end up on their finished plates. (Some dishes have involved more than 20 different Carolina sourced items.)

“The goal has always been for chefs to connect with farmers and producers across the state and to support local agriculture,” Billotto says. “This event is all about helping them find their creativity, helping them explore different farms, produce, product, and networking.”

This competition is different from many others in the sense that there is no mystery ingredient that has to be incorporated, nor a surprise twist to deal with.

“We want the chefs to be able to put their best foot forward,” Billotto says. “We don’t want it to be weird. We want it to be creative. We want them to think outside the box and do things that they may not necessarily get to do in their restaurants. So if you’re a chef in an Italian restaurant, but what you really want to make is a vegetarian dish that incorporates locally grown mushrooms in North Carolina, that’s what you do.”

Chef Mauricio Huarcaya competed for three years before winning Best Chef, and this year is back as a judge. When he started with the showdown, he was doing catering and popups around Wilmington with his brother, and says the experience gave him the confidence to think bigger.

“When people acknowledge you in a good way, it really boosts your confidence,” Huarcaya says. “We opened a food truck after we won this competition last year and we’re working towards a restaurant. But this competition helped me see that you don’t need a restaurant or a brick and mortar to explore and make something out of yourself. It’s a great gateway to do things you didn’t do or you couldn’t do before.”

Tie Whitaker, owner and pastry chef of Buttermilk Boutique, a Raleigh-based company that specializes in pastries that evoke nostalgia, first competed in 2019. By 2021, Whitaker won Pastry Chef of the Year with a chocolate cigar that had a smoked chocolate mousse and a whiskey ice cream.

“The year that I won, Buttermilk Boutique was just my side hustle and then I decided to kind of throw the rules out the window and take a chance on myself,” Whitaker says. “The Chef Showdown really helped me bring the pastries that I dreamt about, gave me the courage to put them on a plate and bring them in front of folks. I told Heidi, if it wasn’t for her, I don’t know that Buttermilk Boutique would be where it is right now. She really gave me the confidence to think outside the box. Watching all of the other chefs and pastry chefs do their thing, really inspired me to do my thing and put my dreams on a plate. The fact that I won really inspired me. It gave me the confidence I needed to jump out on my own.”

Chefs aren’t the only ones winning thanks to the competition. According to Chad Blackwell, Food Service Marketing Specialist for the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, the competitors used more than 800 different farms throughout the five months of competition last year.

“That’s pretty impactful,” he says. “It brings a ton of farmers together with a lot of chefs and building those relationships means chefs can go beyond the distributors. It really bolsters those relationships between small farmers and independent restaurants.”

For Billotto, that’s the biggest success of the past decade.

“It feels amazing that it’s 10 years,” she says.”All I did was be the cheerleader. I introduced people to people. I’m a connector of people, and I cheer people on. Sometimes people need a little boost to their confidence and I love to do that. It’s a tight community, and we’re better, we’re stronger together.”