Local Chef Places 2nd at World Food Championships

WILTON, CT — The kitchen of a senior living facility is among the last places you might expect to dish out gourmet celebrity chef grub, but Brookdale Senior Living in Wilton has a ringer in the kitchen.

Chef Carol Koty works as the dining services coordinator at Brookdale, and she just placed second in the seafood category of the World Food Championships, the CTPost has reported. She is in training to be a "celebrity chef," with the ultimate goal of having her own show on the Food Network.

The WFC is the largest competition in all of "Food Sport," that tastiest of tournaments, where cooks compete against the clock and each other to create culinary masterworks. The seventh annual event was held this year in Orange Beach, AL and played host to more than 500 teams from 12 countries and 43 U.S. states.

Koty, a Stratford native who recetly migrated to Naugatuck, entered three dishes into the ring: whiskey red curry Mahi with crab mango salsa and pina colada rice; seafood pot pie and fried grouper roulade with crab filling and lobster pilaf. She entered the pot pie in the category of "signature dish" where it was awarded a perfect score of 100, according to the competition's website.

This was Koty's sixth time competing in the WFC, but her first top ten finish, automatically guaranteeing her a berth in the 2019 cook-off. In the off-season, Koty plans to dish out plenty of her "perfect" pot pies to her toughest critics, at Brookdale.

"My residents are very honest and love hearing about my competitions and tasting them," Koty told The CTPost.

Photo vis WFC