Rules for Judges

Purpose: a fun, educational and community driven activity that promotes the ecological and economic benefit of locally caught seafood.

Concept: two (or three) local chefs compete.Each can only bring their favorite cooking vessels/utensils, presentation plates and three of their favorite ingredients. Once there, they’ll find out about the secret seafood they will be using, given $25 and 15 minutes to use the event as their pantry, and then an hour to prepare, cook and plate their dish.Participants must make adequate food for two judges and the emcee(s) to taste as well as offer a small tastings to the public.

Judging Instructions

It would be great if judges could arrive as early as possible – preferably at the start of the event so they can be part of the whole event.

The chefs should be done with cooking in an hour.

Tickets will be passed out to the public for tastings (assuming the local board of health has approved public tastings).

Each dish will be judged based on three criteria:

• Taste - 10 points
• Originality - 5 points
• Presentation - 5 points
• Using the entire animal - 10 points

You can download the judging scorecards by clicking on this link.

Judges can discuss the dishes with each other. In case of a tie, a member of the public or the emcee will act as the tie-breaker. If there is still a tie, we’ll toss a coin!

Scorecards will be available when you arrive.

Our event emcee will introduce you and engage the judges and chefs in the event.

Thank you for taking part in a Seafood Throwdown. Enjoy the event and pass on the word about our local fishing economies.