Chef Cara Stadler won the America’s Culinary Cup in the final episode that aired last night on CBS. She takes home a $1 million prize. Parade magazine has the details the dish that helped her win,
Certainly what helped set her apart was her final meal, which was something even Lakshmi hasn’t tasted before. “Cara made this beautiful dish of tea with some dumplings in it, which I had never seen before,” she says of the chef’s third and final presentation, which Stadler described on the show as a fusion of English and Asian cultures.
Stadler was named a Best New Chef by Food & Wine in 2014 and was a Beard Awards nominee for Rising Star Chef of the Year in 2015. She formerly ran a set of restaurants in Portland and Brunswick along with her mother Cecile Stadler.