{"id":350487,"date":"2021-08-24T06:05:31","date_gmt":"2021-08-23T20:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=350487"},"modified":"2021-08-24T06:05:31","modified_gmt":"2021-08-23T20:05:31","slug":"samson-tan-is-first-ever-tinian-top-chef-winner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/samson-tan-is-first-ever-tinian-top-chef-winner\/","title":{"rendered":"Samson Tan is first-ever Tinian Top Chef winner"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_350488\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-350488\" style=\"width: 960px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Top-chef-pix.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-350488\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Top-chef-pix-1024x531.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"498\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-350488\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">From left, Tinian Municipal Council chair Joseph Santos, Samson Tan, and Tinian Mayor Edwin Aldan after Tan won a cooking competition that was part of the festivities of Tinian\u2019s first-ever Beef, Beer, and Bands Festival which ran from Aug. 13 to 15. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Samson Tan won big two weekends ago, after being named the Tinian Top Chef during a cooking competition held at the first-ever Beef, Beer, and Bands Festival on Tinian that ran from Aug. 13 to 15.<\/p>\n<p>Following a format similar to the popular cooking competition Iron Chef, three chefs from Saipan\u2014Tan, Laxmi Shrestha from Everest Kitchen, and Sonnie Sablan from Ina\u2019s Kitchen\u2014were invited to Tinian and in 90 minutes had to make an appetizer\/chaser, soup, and main entree that utilized one required, key ingredient: Tinian beef.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with Tan on Monday, he described his competition meal as a \u201cFrench-island style fusion.\u201d For his appetizer, Tan prepared beef tartare\u2014a dish similar to and involving techniques similar to beef kelaguen\u2014 and soft-boiled egg. For soup he prepared a consomm\u00e9, or very rich beef broth, and for his main entr\u00e9e, Tan prepared beef bourguignon, a French red wine beef stew, which was paired with roasted beef bone marrow.<\/p>\n<p>The meal, which was paired with a glass of red wine for each of the competition\u2019s three judges, won Tan a trophy, a $1,000 cash prize, and an automatic invite to next year\u2019s Tinian Top Chef, which will be held during next year\u2019s BBB Festival in July 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Tan said he was more than grateful for the opportunity to compete and highlight Tinian\u2019s beef through his cooking. \u201cIt\u2019s a great, exciting, and fun experience to be able to visit Tinian again to share my knowledge, experience and expertise. &#8230;I feel humble and grateful, [and] being a champion [was] just a plus for me,\u201d said Tan.<\/p>\n<p>Tan has had 30 years of food and beverage and large-scale hotel culinary experience in the CNMI, and has won cooking competitions in the past, winning several competitions that were held during past Tastes of the Marianas. He is also a member of the American Culinary Federation and Micronesian Chefs Association.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Samson Tan won big two weekends ago, after being named the Tinian Top Chef during&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":350488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2877],"class_list":["post-350487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-samson-tan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}