Choose Your Favorite Girl Scout Cookie At Asbury Lanes Thursday

ASBURY PARK, NJ — Surely you've heard of Top Model. But have you heard of Top Cookie?

This Thursday, Feb. 6 is the Girl Scout's "Top Cookie" dessert showdown, featuring celebrity chef (and Hazlet native) David Burke at Asbury Lanes.

The event is a dessert competition, where local Jersey Shore restaurants have been tasked with creating the "best" dessert using pre-selected Girl Scout cookie flavors and ingredients. Burke and other judges will be determining the winner. If you pay to attend the event ($75), you will also have an opportunity to sample the desserts, and vote on a winner. All of the night's proceeds will benefit Girl Scouts of the Jersey Shore.

Burke himself is tasked with whipping up a special dessert for the event using the Girl Scouts' new Lemon-Up cookies, which you can also sample. Related: Middletown Girl Chosen To Be Pictured On Girl Scout Cookie Boxes

Here are the participating restaurants, and cookies they have to use:

• Nicholas Creamery in Atlantic Highlands and Fair Haven: Trefoil (shortbread)
• Ohana Grill in Lavallette: Samoas
• McLoone's Restaurants: Tagalongs
• Cuisine on the Green Atlantis in Little Egg Harbor: Thin Mints
• Talula's in Asbury Park: Do-si-do (Peanut butter sandwich cookie)

Each restaurant had 50 boxes of their chosen cookie delivered to their door; they had to use the actual cookies in their dessert.

The celebrity judges are Burke, plus Patty Caneda, the owner of White Rooster Cuban restaurant in Toms River, Carol Stillwell, CEO of Stillwell-Hansen, Inc., Jeremy Grunin, President, Jay and Linda Grunin Foundation and Tom Hayes, Director, Consumer & Community Relations, New Jersey Natural Gas.

When: Thursday, February 6, 2020, 6-9 p.m. Judging will begin at 7:30 p.m. Awards will be presented at approximately 8:15 p.m. It is $75 for the public to attend, and there will be drinks, food, bowling and ... Girl Scout cookies!

Where: Asbury Lanes, 209 Fourth Avenue, Asbury Park, NJ 07712. Call Asbury Lanes for tickets.

Event emcee'd by Steve Bidgood, Salt Creek Grille and Tim McLoone, McLoone’s Restaurants