World Food Championships Awards $50,000 for a Guy’s Mom’s Carrot Cake

By Scott Roeben, on November 11 2013

2 min read 0 comments

The World Food Championships, a four-day culinary competition that took place in downtown Las Vegas Nov. 7-10, 2013, ended with a succulent twist.

After days of heated competition between some of the best culinary talent out there, the World Food Champion title and $50,000 grand prize went to Dave Elliott for his mother’s carrot cake.

That’s a lot of simoleons for a slice of carrot cake!

The World Food Championships are made up of a number of distinct competitions: World Barbecue Championship, World Open Chili Championship, World Burger Championship, World Sandwich Championship, World Dessert Championship, Bacon World Championship and World Recipe Championship. Yes, bacon.

Winners in each category then move to the overall championship, and let’s put it this way, the dessert category was the least likely to win the giant check. Desserts get no respect, except in Las Vegas, of course. (We asked celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay about a carrot cake winning the World Food Championships, and his simple reply was, “Seriously!”)

People are serious about the World Food Championships.

Dave Elliott was such an underdog, in fact, he had to change his flight arrangements back to Kansas twice because he kept winning, much to the surprise of he and his mother.

Dave Elliott won under the name Porky McBeef and the Cluckers. The runner-up was the World BBQ Champion, Victor Howard from Texas, and the second runner-up was the World Burger Champion, Wade Fortin from Chicago.

Try putting that thing in your wallet. — Dave Elliott has a moment to himself as he thinks, “How in the hell am I going to fit this into my wallet?”

There was a fascinating interview with Dave Elliott’s mother, which we sort of missed because Claire Sinclair, star of “Pin Up” at The Stratosphere, walked by (see below). She was a guest judge or something. It all got a little foggy at that point.

Carrot cake won, but maybe it should've been cheesecake. — How much better would this caption have been if Dave Elliott had won with his mom’s cheesecake recipe. Oh, well.

This was the second annual World Food Championships, with a total prize pool of $300,000. Clearly, we need to start blogging less and rifling through our mother’s cake recipes more.

A highlight of this year's World Food Championships was seeing someone with worse fashion sense than us. — A highlight of this year’s World Food Championships was seeing someone with worse fashion sense than us.

The World Food Championships took over downtown for several days, hosting events at Fremont Street Experience, the Fremont East District and Downtown 3rd District. About 300 chefs took part. We have no idea how many brought their mommies.