BR Chef Beats Bobby Flay On The Food Network

Baton Rouge Chef Jay Ducote of Gov’t Taco Beat Bobby Flay yesterday on the Food Network’s Beat Bobby Flay by challenging the world renown chef to a crawfish boil.

The program lets local chefs challenge Flay to a dish of their choice and gives both sides 45 minutes to cook it. Ducote says he couldn’t thinking of a better way to represent down home Louisiana cooking.

“I’m glad I could make Louisiana proud. I think that was the biggest risk with picking a crawfish boil was that had I lost to Bobby Flay at a crawfish boil I might not have been able to come back home.”

Ducote, who’s featured on other Food Network programs, says he got the idea last year during crawfish season. He first thought of crawfish etouffee, but…

“What if I can actually challenge him to a crawfish boil? Something that is not necessarily a fine dining dish, it’s more of a backyard dish, an outdoor party kind of a thing, and that’s my kind of cooking style anyway.”

The program was filmed last year in June.

While Flay went for a “deconstructed” boil with items like crawfish mayo potato salad, and crawfish tarragon buttered corn. Ducote kept it classic, and even tried for a traditional presentation…

“We will actually ask the producers if we could cover the judge’s table with newspapers, and I could dump the crawfish on the table, and they said no, you can’t do that for technical reasons.”

Flay appeared frazzled during the program, and only let his crawfish boil for five minutes.