Chef wins big for DuPage-area food pantry

Bacon makes just about everything taste better.

But Mark Maassen will need to pull another culinary trick out of his chef's hat for the finals of a competition that has seen the Westmont resident win $10,000 for a DuPage County food pantry.

“The chef I'm facing in the finals used bacon in his dish, too,” said Maassen, a chef and instructor at Le Condon Bleu in Chicago.

He will square off against New York-based Chef Alex Dino on Nov. 4 for the finals of the Sears Chef Challenge after both defeated 11 other chefs each in two previous Iron Chef-style competitions.

Meanwhile, clients of the Wheaton-based People's Resource Center have been benefiting from Maassen's skills and popularity. Officials from the charity have been using the money Maassen has won for them to buy groceries to stock the shelves at its Westmont pantry.

“Frankly, we didn't have anything to do with it,” said Kim Perez, the center's director. “He picked us, so aren't we lucky?”

Perez said every penny that Maassen wins for the pantry goes toward groceries. She said the center buys groceries from the Northern Illinois Food Bank at a “significantly reduced rate.”

She thinks Maassen is the bee's knees.

“He could have picked anyone,” she said. “We're just lucky enough to be in his backyard.”

Maassen said he became familiar with the pantry because a neighbor volunteers there.

“It's a really great organization,” he said. “People don't realize there is poverty here in DuPage County.”

The pantry distributed more than 2.3 million pounds of food last year, Perez said.

Perez said she only found out about the competition after it had begun. The first round was more like a popularity contest where visitors to searschefchallenge.com could vote on the chef they liked the most based on video demonstrations of the chefs working. She said as soon as she and other charity officials learned the center could benefit from Maassen's victory, they rolled into action.

“We just started getting everyone to get online and vote,” she said. Maassen was doing the same.

“I felt a little like a sellout trying to get people to vote for me,” he admitted. “But it was worth it.”

In addition to winning money for the food pantry, Maassen gets to pick appliances from Kenmore's catalog for his personal kitchen. If he wins the final round, he gets $20,000 to completely redo his kitchen at home. Maassen said his home kitchen is surprisingly “terrible.”

“I'm going to gut it,” he said. “The counters, the cabinets, the floors, the light fixtures, everything. It is our first house we owned.”

The semifinals pitted Maassen against three other chefs from New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Popularity wasn't a factor this time and it all came down to skill. The competition required them to go to Whole Foods for a 30-minute shopping spree and pick up foods that represented their city.

“I thought meat,” he said. “We're a pork capital.”

Maassen made a sausage-stuffed pork tenderloin with green beans and a tomato and bacon fondue for the judges.

“It was so funny being there and talking to the spectators,” Perez said. “Many people in the food industry said Mark was the guy to beat.”

It didn't take long for Perez to realize the audience was right.

“When I smelled it and when I saw the judge's eat his food and their reactions, I knew we were the lucky ones,” she said.

The finals will be broadcast live on the website from the Kenmore Live Studio in Chicago. In the meantime, Maassen is enjoying the notoriety he has earned among his peers and pupils.

“The students at school love it,” he said. “I call myself a D-list Internet celebrity.”