The Long Beach Grand Prix Fixe was my first dive into a chefs competition with My Dude, Samuel Cornejo. It was as glorious as it was challenging. Juggling egos, schedules, ingredients, and the unpredictability of live competition was no small feat. 

And, I must reiterate: the Long Beach Grand Prix Fixe was never about pitting chefs against each other. The competition was simply a medium: a way to showcase what this city is capable of when creativity and community collide. For too long, Long Beach has been seen as culinary-adjacent, living in the long shadow of our great sister, Los Angeles. This was a rebuttal. This was proof that we’re not an afterthought; we’re a culinary destination. A city of cooks and creators who take pride in the details and feed not just the body, but the soul of the community.

And the Food Gods knew before anyone did: some of the best food to ever come out of our city was being served across the competition’s seven dinners. Here are some personal highlights, where seafood very much took on a starring role across the competition…

Black bass and fennel potato purée by Chef Jason Winters

Served during Bracket One of the Long Beach Grand Prix Fixe on Sept. 29, 2025

One of the more beautiful aspects of this competition was to see chefs out of their element—or, in the case of Chef Jason Winters, out of both his element and what he is known for. The owner of Speak Cheezy is rightfully respected for making stellar sourdough pies but few, if any, in Long Beach know his food outside his pies.

What he proved is that he is a maximalist at heart, layering seemingly endless flavors and ingredients. This has its risks and rewards—and boy, did this dish serve us its rewards. Citrus butter for creamy and bright. Castelvetrano olives for earthy. A spectacular green harissa that brought subtle tang and heat. It was, kid you not, a Top 10 Fish Dish in my life.

And it only made me want to know what Chef Jason can do outside the walls of a pizzeria.

Shrimp mousse-stuffed halibut with shrimp cappeletti by Chef Maxwell Pfeiffer

Served during the Finale of the Long Beach Grand Prix Fixe on Oct. 20, 2025

Chef Maxwell Pfeiffer competed without the backing of his own restaurant or staff. And while others had the full support of their kitchens, he made it to the finale. He managed to slice through the bracket, knocking out both staples and rising names with calm, disciplined execution. His plating was architectural, his technique razor-sharp, his flavors deeply confident. If Navarro’s win was a testament to experience, Pfeiffer’s run was proof of a rare, emerging force—one that will undoubtedly shape the next chapter of Long Beach dining.

This dish was such a dish. See, you think you’ve had a beurre blanc sauce. Or a proper demi-glace. For me, it was a meunière. I love brown butter—hell, I just love butter—but a meunière is special. Instead of hefty, earthy notes like sage that is commonly paired with brown butter, meunières liven it up with citric acid. It is absurdly simple on paper. And then I ate Chef Max’s version.

It was the silky coating of a shrimp mousse-stuffed bit of halibut paired with shrimp-stuffed cappeletti pasta. Umami-packed and citrus-soaked, it was—like Chef Jason Winters’s black bass—a revelation and Top 10 Pasta Dish in my life.

Sea bass with foie gras hummus by Chef Jason Witzl

Served during the Semifinals of the Long Beach Grand Prix Fixe on Oct. 6, 2025

Chef Jason Witzl doesn’t follow trends; he either bends them or outright ignores them in favor of his own style. Through Ellie’s, his cornerstone restaurant in Alamitos Beach that largely ushered in Long Beach’s current food renaissance, Chef Jason has carved out his own lane in the city’s dining landscape. Ingredient-driven. Elegantly chaotic. Unmistakably his.

The man has a knack for creating plates that hum with confidence and, I say this very lovingly, a mild sense of restraint. It’s the restraint that you can tell wanted to be way louder but still couldn’t help itself from being, well, vocal. The result? You always pause mid-bite because you know you’re eating a Witzl dish. His food is coastal and global in equal measure, Mediterranean at heart but filtered through Southern California’s rhythm—bright, layered, grounded in farmers’ market honesty.

That’s what makes this dish he served at the competition so utterly gorgeous. Sea bass. Foie gras hummus. (Yes, you read that right. And yes, it was magical.) Green chickpea salad. Zhoug sauce. So undeniably him. It’s a study in controlled tension: the buttery richness of foie gras folded into hummus, tamed by the bite of green chickpeas, and electrified by zhoug’s herbal fire. All connected with a perfectly cooked sea bass. It’s surf meets soil, indulgence meets austerity, all framed by Chef Jason’s wild knack for balance amid seemingly endless layers.

Shrimp toast with Cantonese curry by Chef Luis Navarro

Served during the Finale of the Long Beach Grand Prix Fixe on Oct. 20

For those who know Chef Paul Buchanan, the sustainability-obsessed owner of Primal Alchemy Catering, you know he has plate obsessions as well. One of them is curry, a plate that he is often quick to dismiss if it does meet the top of the hundreds he has tasted across his career. If there were any way to showcase how beautiful Chef Luis Navarro’s Cantonese curry was, it was the fact that Chef Paul not only refused to have the plate taken away, he kept it throughout the dinner. With each additional course ended, he would swoop back in for a few spoonfuls until the end of the meal.

He literally wanted it to be his last bite.

Silky smooth. Superbly spicy. Succulently stratified. There are endless alliteration-centric descriptions to hold up Chef Luis’s curry. But none better than Chef Paul’s insistence upon keeping that plate. Or a patron asking if they can have a container to go.

Carne asada taco by Chef Waldo Stout

Served during Bracket One of the Long Beach Grand Prix Fixe on Sept. 15, 2025

There was something so distinctly beautiful about Chef Waldo Stout’s menu—and it was the storytelling. Perhaps it went over some heads but I did my best to convey it: it was an ode to Sonoran wheat. See, Chef Waldo realized his “hands were made for dough” while watching his mom make  tortillas sobaqueras, massive flour rounds that were served on the regular with meals. And he would be reminded when working at Bavel making pita. Or Bestia making pasta. Or at Marlena making pizza yet again…

So he chose to get Sonoran wheatberries. And mill them himself for the dinner. He even set a side of the berries so people could touch them, smell them. Across three iterations of the wheat—a fry bread honoring his raising in Arizona, a pasta honoring his work in Italian spaces across SoCal, and, lastly, a flour tortilla honoring Sonora itself—he created a gorgeous arc of this grain we often take for granted.

The only chef in the competition to use the mighty Josper grill in the kitchen for his ribeeye carne asada, he created one of the best tacos I have ever had. Chiltepin salsa for heat. Avocado salsa and curtido for slices of fat and acid on the heat. And that sweet, creamy earthiness of a perfect flour tortilla. Absolute magic.