El Paso Chef at ELEMI Competes in New Season of Beat Bobby Flay

Did you catch ELEMI chef/owner Emiliano Marentes on a recent episode of Beat Bobby Flay?

The El Paso native threw down with a chef from Oregon on the new season of the Food Network competition for the right to cook against the celebrity chef. No worries if you didn't watch because I did and I'll fill you in.

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The premise of Beat Bobby Flay is two chefs go head-to-head in a cook-off featuring an ingredient chosen by Flay. Whoever the judges choose as the winner then gets to take on Bobby Flay with his or her signature dish.

So, can an El Pasoan say he beat Bobby Flay?

In Season 34, Episode 3 titled “Brooke and Crooks Cook Up a Win,” which initially aired Thursday, September 14, Marentes, who was introduced as “putting El Paso, Texas on the culinary map" and walked out tossing tortillas, was paired up against a chef from Portland, Oregon.

The ingredient the accomplished chefs had to "make the star" of their dish was a type of Spanish olives.

Saying the challenge would be tricky for him "as I rarely use it in any Mexican dishes", Emiliano chose to make Camarones a la Veracruzana (shrimp in tomato sauce).

Unfortunately for our hometown owner/chef of ELEMI, the sauce he was making reduced too much and that proved to be his undoing so he did not get to cook against Bobby Flay. Although he didn’t get the W, Marentes said he was "happy that I got to showcase my style of cooking and my Mexican culture.”

The episode will re-air on Thursday, September 28, at 4 p.m. on the Food Network.