Meet the Jacksonville Vegan Chef Challenge wInner

The Jacksonville Vegan Chef Challenge has officially wrapped up and after 31 restaurants competed and more than 600 votes were cast, we now know which chef took the top spot. Let's go. That's awesome. Congratulations. This is Azhar Mohammed. Thank you so much for being with us. He is the owner and chef at Ahua Mexican Kitchen and Bar. We practiced how to say that. Let's go. Now along with us is challenge organizer Raquel Little. Good morning, guys. I'm so excited to have you here. As you can see, there is some yummy food set out here because you're going to kind of prepare for us. Yeah. What are you making here? So I'm making jackfruit birria tacos. That was one of our best sellers during the challenge and we got a lot of great compliments. So I thought this is the best place to showcase that. And it's on a menu as well. So now you can come and enjoy any day you want. So this we got jackfruit birria tacos. So it gives people the flavor that miss that kind of spice and kick in the vegan food. A lot of times it's beef birria that's traditionally being done. So we kind of took a twist on that, making sure it's cheesy. You get all the flavors with it. You dip in the sauce and you eat like how you do a beef birria. So you get the flavors that people yearn. And I think nobody's missing the beef in this dish. Yummy. So what goes into it then? Tell us. So what we do is we make our own tortillas and we use blue corn masa. So we do the blue corn tortillas and we do a cheese. We cook the jackfruit with a lot of spices. We got guajillo peppers, onions, tomatoes. We cook it through. So it's like slow braised. It's just nice and tender. Gives that a little bit of the spice, but then you add a little lime juice. It cuts through it and it's a great dish. Either happy hour, dinner, whatever you want to make out of it. It's perfect. So right now you just got the tortillas on with the cheese. You were saying it's a vegan cheese. It's a vegan cheese. Correct. Yeah. So we did the vegan cheese. So you don't have to take the cheese off because you're still vegan. People still want that creaminess in their food. So we got that covered. Yeah. Raquel, for viewers who may not be familiar with the Vegan Chef Challenge, walk us through how it works. Also, why is it important to encourage more restaurants to have vegan options? Yeah. So I think one of the coolest things is that Ahuja did a great job at doing what we wanted to accomplish with this challenge, right? So they, you know, are not a vegan restaurant, but they went ahead and really committed to the challenge and created an entire new plant-based menu. And the response from diners was incredible. So that's what we want to do is we don't want to create a separate restaurant scene for vegans. We want plant-based customers to be able to walk into restaurants that Jacksonville already loves and be able to order something great. Okay. So I'm just learning this now then, because I would have thought, oh, that he specializes in vegan food. No, you guys in this competition, you're recruiting popular restaurants that maybe don't specialize in vegan food and say, hey, can you make something vegan and make it good? So local restaurants only, we want to support local restaurants. So we invite them to challenge themselves and put on a brand new plant-based menu item for the entire month of August. Wow. So yeah, they do a really great job. So he came up with this for the competition. Yeah. And now he's keeping it, which is awesome and really exciting. So now people can go and try it outside of August. Yeah. Azura, I was going to say, so have people been able to try it yet? Have you been able to give it to your customers yet? Absolutely. What do they say? They love it. I mean, the comments are phenomenal. That's why we probably won the challenge. People love the food. And one of the things that right from, because I've been in this industry for 25 years, I'm the national culinary director for PGA Tour as well. One of the things that I always focus in on all my career is the vegan food and the vegetarian food needs to be as much focus as everything else. So it's not that it's an afterthought. It needs to be part of the planning, part of the innovative menu that you're creating, that it has to have the same amount of attention and love for creating vegan and vegetarian. So this was perfect because coming from India, background and traveled all over the world while I was working with Ritz Carlton and hotels and resorts, vegetarian food was, I was like, this is right up my alley. I love it. And let's create a menu that's fantastic. So we've got our that's with a lentil that we're using beluga lentil. We've got this, we're doing a dish that people have been loving. It's our vegetarian and vegan menu has always been really great, but working with Raquel gave us another kind of avenue to work on and promote our restaurant. You know, what's really interesting too is out of the 600 plus votes that we got, more than just about half of them were non-vegans. So even though this is vegan food, it's not just for vegan diners. We all eat fruits and vegetables. So this is really just an inclusive dining event for Jacksonville that makes it a fun destination to travel to. And the other thing too, is when we pick a restaurant, you know, I don't always dine with vegans. My husband's not vegan. My friends aren't vegan. So we want to find a place where we can all go and they can order what they want. And I can have an awesome option too, instead of just fries. And even just, you were saying 600 votes. I mean, that's a lot of people taking part in this 31 restaurants, right? That's a big effort. Yeah. On top of, you know, the people who voted, people still went out, dined and didn't vote. So what's cool is the restaurants, I think almost seven of them sold out of their menu item because of how high demand was. So there really was interest for this. And I think that's the other cool thing about this challenge is it shows restaurants who maybe want to experiment with a new item that there is really a demand for it in the community. That's, oh, this is so exciting. My favorite part about this whole thing is that I'm going to get to eat it. It is burning hot. I feel like I want to wait a second. But just last thing, before we head over to weather, where can we find your restaurant? Tell us where it's at. So we are on 3rd Street North, 311 3rd Street North. We're just right opposite Wells Fargo in Jax Beach. And again, it's Ahua. Ahua Mexican Kitchen and Bar. And please keep us in mind about the holiday parties. We're ready. We're taking bookings for holiday parties. We can accommodate up to 200 guests there. And then we're doing a great mystery dinner, seven course, including vegan and regular guests on 21st of October. So if you want to book your table, please do so. That's awesome. Okay. I'm going to blow this and then I'm going to try it.