Self-taught chef Kaius Austin-Bey is aiming for his third consecutive Individuals’s Selection Award on the Burger Showdown 6.0 on Friday at The Cherrity Bar .
Billed as “San Antonio’s Juiciest Night time for a Trigger,” Austin-Bey and 11 different native cooks will sling burgers beginning at 6:30 p.m. to assist the nonprofit Mercy Cooks and its flood reduction efforts in Kerrville.
Impressed by a latest journey to Puerto Rico, Austin-Bey will probably be grilling an angus patty topped with braised oxtail, guava peach marmalade, queso de freír and papitas on a potato bun.
“It’s gonna be insane,” mentioned Austin-Bey, proprietor of The Chef Kauis Xperience. “Our successful burger final yr had tomato bourbon bacon jam with aged cheddar and a few crispy onion rings.”
Whereas Austin-Bey captured the Individuals’s Selection Award the final two years, Justin Bluhm of STXBBQ received the Judges Selection Award for greatest burger in 2023 and 2024.
Different notable cooks at Friday’s showdown embrace Ernie Bradley from the Cherrity Bar, Jared Cattoni from Dos Sirenos Brewing and Phillip Gonyea from Krazy Kotsu.
Winners of the Individuals’s Selection and Choose’s Selection awards will every obtain $100.
“Cooks love this competitors as a result of we have now sponsors that present the components to allow them to go all out and make the perfect burger they’ll,” mentioned Alan Williams, co-founder of The Flavors of Texas, which is co-hosting the occasion with Homegrown Chef. “And so they love competing.”
Basic admission tickets are $71.30 and VIP tickets are $117.51. The occasion options all of the slider burgers you may eat, french fries from JD’s Chili Parlor and dessert from the Texas Cookie Store.
Drinks will not be included. The Cherrity Bar may have an array of beer and cocktails accessible for buy.
Austin-Bey is an unlikely Individuals’s Selection Award winner. A local of Montgomery, Alabama, he labored as a server at a number of San Antonio eating places with aspirations of turning into a caterer and personal chef.
His cooking expertise? He as soon as ready meals for 5 roommates in a two-bedroom residence.
“These guys had been from Louisiana,” Austin-Bey recalled. “They mentioned, ‘This tastes like grandma’s cooking.’”
Unable to attend culinary college, Austin-Bey learn books, studied YouTube movies and watched cooking reveals. He experimented with pop-ups whereas serving meals at Paesano’s, Flemings and Olive Backyard.
Discovering time to pursue private ambition whereas working as a server was troublesome. Launching a enterprise, he felt, was all however inconceivable.
The COVID-19 pandemic opened a door. As eating places shut down, Austin-Bey discovered himself out of labor and with loads of time.
“I made a decision to carry the restaurant expertise into individuals’s houses, to intimate non-public dinners,” he mentioned. “All of the issues I realized in eating places, I used and mixed with my cooking abilities. So I’ve been capable of service Spurs gamers, politicians and large time CEOs.”
In just some years, Austin-Bey says he has received 14 awards for cooking and presentation. Demand for his cooking and catering continues to develop.
“Enterprise,” he mentioned, “is nice.”
