CIA Students Cook Their Way to the Super Bowl

Four CIA students headed to Phoenix for Super Bowl weekend after being named finalists at a cook-off at the Hyde Park campus sponsored by PepsiCo, and two of the students actually got tickets to the game. Four two-student teams competed in January in front of celebrity judges in “Game Day Grub Match”—billed as the ultimate tailgate cook-off. Once in Phoenix, the CIA students served their dishes at several VIP events, where a winning team was chosen. Those two students, CIA Hyde Park sophomores Matthew Johnson and Cullen Folks, earned tickets to the big game, along with a $5,000 scholarship.

The other finalists were Olivia DeSalvo and Marie Taccino from the Greystone campus, who received a $3,000 scholarship in addition to the trip to Arizona. The runners-up—Mason Aronson, Adam Shoemaker, Ryan Hartwell, and Mathew Kilgus—each earned a $1,000 scholarship and a football signed by the celebrity judges.

Judges were David Burke ’82, Waldy Malouf ’75, New York Jets center Nick Mangold, and PepsiCo’s Stephen Kalil. Anne Burrell ’96 acted as emcee.

PepsiCo worked exclusively with the CIA to design and launch this brand-new competition, which was open to students at the three U.S. campuses. Video “webisodes” follow the competition from start to finish. The finalists were announced at a student tailgate party on campus during a playoff game, where attendees noshed on the competitors’ dishes and met the celebrity judges.