{"id":397907,"date":"2026-09-12T13:29:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T13:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/397907\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T13:29:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T13:29:45","slug":"the-tampa-bay-food-fight-chef-battle-comes-to-st-pete-on-tuesday-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/397907\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tampa Bay Food Fight chef battle comes to St. Pete on Tuesday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-perfmatters-preload=\"\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"780\" height=\"520\" data-attachment-id=\"17987\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.cltampa.com\/food-drink\/photos-st-pete-reclaims-tampa-bay-food-fight-title-at-amalie-arena-19471022\/attachment\/food_fight-78\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cltampa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/food_fight-78.webp?fit=1000%2C667&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1000,667\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"food_fight-78\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"&lt;p&gt;Team St. Pete captain Chef Lee Aquino during Tampa Bay Food Fight at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida on Feb. 11, 2025.&lt;\/p&gt;&#10;\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cltampa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/food_fight-78.webp?fit=780%2C520&amp;ssl=1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789219785_648_food_fight-78.webp\" alt=\"A high-energy victory photograph showing Team St. Pete captain Chef Lee Aquino celebrating on stage with his team during Tampa Bay Food Fight at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida on Feb. 11, 2025. Center stage, Aquino wears a white chef coat and grey apron, holding the large &quot;FOOD FIGHT&quot; championship trophy topped with a oversized golden cleaver while cheering with his mouth open and raising his index finger. To his left, a team member wearing a white chef coat, black cap, and glasses shouts excitedly while pointing upward, alongside fellow team members and event hosts celebrating under bright arena stage lighting.\" class=\"wp-image-17987\"  \/>Team St. Pete captain Chef Lee Aquino during Tampa Bay Food Fight at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida on Feb. 11, 2025. Credit: Dave Decker \/ Creative Loafing Tampa Bay<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cltampa.com\/food-drink\/photos-st-pete-reclaims-tampa-bay-food-fight-title-at-amalie-arena-19471022\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">winning the \u201cTampa Bay Food Fight\u201d title in 2025<\/a>, a team of chefs from St. Petersburg will try to repeat on home turf this week. Allelo\u2019s Nick Ocando captains a side featuring some of the most creative minds in the \u2018Burg including Tim Lentsch from Juno and the Peacock, plus Chris Astrip of the Black Pearl in Dunedin.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Leading Team Tampa in 2026 is Taro Larrea from the new Sapphire supper club who\u2019ll have cooks like Felicia Lacalle of Quiote Tequilaria and Noble Crust\u2019s Fernando Sanchez at his side.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They\u2019ll be judged by a five-person panel that includes celebrity chef Geoffrey Zakarian and his daughter, Anna, during this sampling event and party. Proceeds from the evening go towards Metropolitan Ministries Hunger Relief Network.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/tampabayfoodfight.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tickets for Tampa Bay Food Fight happening Tuesday, Sept. 15 at The Coliseum in St. Petersburg are still available for $135.23.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/altnewsfoundation.org\/cl-tampa\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pitch in to help make the Tampa Bay Journalism Project a success.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"has-normal-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cltampa.com\/tampa-newslettersignup-page\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Follow us:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAiECLjru3gB6BLYKOKFLfkVZsqFAgKIhAi467t4AegS2CjihS35FWb\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Google News<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsbreak.com\/@c\/1599764?s=01\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NewsBreak<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/CreativeLoafingTampa\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Reddit<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/cltampabay\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Instagram<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cltampabay\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook\u00a0<\/a>|\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/cltampabay.bsky.social\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">BlueSky<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"collection-link has-small-font-size\">This article appears in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cltampa.com\/collections\/september-10-16-2026\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">September 10 \u2013 16, 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRead his 2016 intro letter\u00a0and disclosures from 2022 and 2021.\u00a0Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief&#8230;\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a class=\"author-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cltampa.com\/author\/rroa\/\" rel=\"author nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMore by Ray Roa\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Team St. Pete captain Chef Lee Aquino during Tampa Bay Food Fight at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[19379,202,204,203,199,201,200,103913,157911],"class_list":["post-397907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-metropolitan-ministries","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa-bay-food-and-drink-events","tag-the-coliseum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}