Self-taught Fort Worth home chef competes in top 10 in national contest
A Covid hobby turned into competing in the top 10 for a national cooking competition for Fort Worth resident Suzie Torres.
Torres would spend a lot of time watching cooking shows while the world was shut down during the pandemic. So she did two things: took lots of walks and went to the grocery store.
She would whip up something new practically every night, challenging herself to try new things that she thought were complicated. She would often post her creations on Facebook for friends and family to drool over.
Now, she is competing in the Colossal’s national Favorite Chef competition, which fundraises for the non-profit culinary arts organization, the James Beard Foundation.
“My husband saw the ad that they were looking for people to apply to be the next Favorite Chef,” Torres told the Star-Telegram. “So he asked me if I would take the challenge, and I said yes.”
The contest began with over 200 competitors. Chefs post their dishes to their social media pages and ask people to vote for them. To move on, a chef must have the most votes. Torres is competing within the top 10 and on July 2, she’ll find out if she made the final five.
The Favorite Chef winner will take home $25,000. They will also appear in the Taste of Home magazine and cook with celebrity chef Carla Hall, one of Torres’ favorites, on a YouTube episode of “Chewed Up.”
To compete for the final five, Torres had to cook up a dish with King’s Hawaiian Rolls and an ingredient from the Pacific Rim geographical area.
“I call it my ‘rock and roll lobster roll,’” Torres said. “It’s a lobster roll made with rock lobster, which is a lobster that is harvested between California and Hawaii. It also has grilled pineapple, macadamia nuts, Japanese mayo, sriracha and Aloha bell peppers.”
Torres invited her close friends over to taste test the dish and get some critiques from beyond the walls of her home. She said there were no notes.
After dishing up her rock and roll lobster roll and posting it to Facebook and Instagram, she waits until Thursday to find out if she has enough votes to make the final five.
“I think right now it’s a popularity vote,” she said. “The whole goal of this thing is to bring awareness to the James Beard Foundation, it’s a good foundation. I’m proud to support it.”
You can vote for Fort Worth’s Suzie Torres on Favorite Chef’s website. You can cast one vote for free. Any more votes require a donation. Voting closes at 9 p.m. Central Time Thursday, July 2.
Outside of the competition, Torres loves to upcycle leftover ingredients in her cooking.
She repurposed the leftover King’s Hawaiian Rolls into a cinnamon bread pudding with pineapple and blueberry syrup. After a party with leftover bags of Funyuns, she created Funyun and sweet hot mustard encrusted chicken thighs. The night before trash day she cleaned out the remaining ingredients in her fridge to make stuffed long peppers, roasted broccoli, eggplant lasagna.
Some of her favorite dishes to cook are anything with fish or her homemade hot sauce. Her signature dish is her carnitas made from pressure-cooked BBQ ribs, potato salad and a chocolate panna cotta for dessert.
If Torres won, she said she would use the $25,000 cash prize for kitchen expansions or a food-centered vacation.
This story was originally published July 2, 2026 at 5:00 AM.