On Saturday, March 2, eight Seattle chefs participated in the Fourth Annual Jet City Meatball Competition in celebration of Charles Smith’s line of Italian wine – Casa Smith and CasaSmith ViNO. More than 3,500 meatballs were served to 360 guests and eight VIP media judges at Charles Smith Wines Jet City, the largest urban winery on the West Coast.
Winning the judges’ vote was Chef Stuart Lane from Artusi for his pork and beef meatballs with a housemade tomato sauce. Charles Smith donated $10,000 to Stuart’s charity of choice – Seattle Children’s Hospital and surprised the additional chefs by donating $1,000 to each of their charities of choice:
Competitors included:
- Artusi, Chef Stuart Lane (Charity – Seattle Children’s Hospital)
- Bizzarro Italian Café, Chef Chris Knight (Charity – Mary’s Place)
- La Messe, Chef Thomas Dodd (Charity – The Trevor Project)
- Passatempo, Chef Cameron Davenport (Charity – Cannara Italy Sister City Foundation)
- Staple + Fancy, an Ethan Stowell Restaurant, Chef Sadie White (Charity – The Humane Society)
- Trattoria Cuoco, Chef Ron Anderson (Charity – Teen Feed)
- Via Tribunali, Erica Kennedy & Hugo Ramierez (Charity – FareStart)
- Vito’s, Chef Michael Crossley (Charity – The Vera Project)
Judges included:
- EatSeattle, Charles Koh
- KING 5, Amity Addrisi-Bocelli
- KING 5, Jordan Wilkerson
- KIRO Radio, Rachel Belle
- Seattle Magazine, Chelsea Lin
- Sirius XM, Gennaro Pecchia
- Sirius XM, Roland Campos
- The Stranger, Kim Selling