Gregory Kallenberg, founder and executive director of the Prize Foundation, at Come and Get It
Night one of Prize Fest, ‘Come and Get It’, Wednesday evening October 16, 2024, at The Remington Suite Hotel in downtown Shreveport.
- Prize Fest is a five-day event in downtown Shreveport featuring celebrity comedians, filmmakers, musicians and chefs.
- Top Chef winner Tristen Epps is returning for his seventh year, bringing six other celebrity chefs with him.
- The festival, which began as Film Prize in 2014, now includes competitions for food, music and comedy.
For the next five days, the streets of downtown Shreveport are going to be filled with celebrity comedians, filmmakers, musicians and chefs.
This congregation of creatives is part of the 2025 Prize Fest. But as celebrity chef, Tristen Epps said, “it’s the people.”
The people and culture of northwest Louisiana are bringing these celebrities to Shreveport.
“The hospitality really keeps bringing me back,” Epps said.
Epps, a Top Chef winner, has come to Shreveport seven times to participate as a judge in Prize Fest. This year, he is bringing six celebrity chefs who were featured on Season 22 of “Top Chef,” and they will be doing a demo and barbecue event.
“I usually like to try to show at least one person Prize Fest every year,” Epps said. “This year I got to bring six… the best chefs that Shreveport has ever seen come in to Shreveport.”
Prize Fest, which initially began with Film Prize in 2014, has evolved into a five-day festival featuring food, music, film and comedy.
Food Prize is composed of Come & Get It, Celebrity Chef BBQ and Battle for the Golden Fork.
Food Prize will kick off Wednesday, Oct. 15, with Come and Get it. This event is the official kickoff to Prize Fest — each local Golden Fork chef finalist, with a nationally recognized celebrity chef, will create an unforgettable tasting.
Friday, Oct. 17, will be Celebrity Chef BBQ Takeover — Bravo’s Top Chef Season 22 winner Tristen Epps and the Food Prize celebrity chefs join forces with local chefs for a one-of-a-kind barbecue lunch on Prize Island.
“I thought it would be really cool to do something that everybody kind of relates to here in Shreveport,” Epps said. “We have people coming from Texas, New York, L.A., and then within those, everyone has a different culture, from Korean, Jewish to Chinese… I thought that having BBQ was a cool equalizer.”
The final Food Prize event is Saturday, Oct. 18, and is known as Battle for the Golden Fork. In this event, the top three Golden Fork finalists face off in a high-energy, Chopped-style showdown live on the streets of downtown Shreveport.
One chef will walk away with $5,000, bragging rights and the coveted Golden Fork Trophy.
To learn more about Food Prize, visit www.prizefest.com.
Makenzie Boucher is a reporter with The Shreveport Times. Contact her at [email protected].
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.shreveporttimes.com ’
