Fairmont Hot Springs chef on a tasty roll

By Steve Hubrecht 

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Local chef Lara McCormack continues her remarkable run on the Favourite Chef, one of North America’s largest online cooking competitions.

As the Pioneer reported two weeks ago, McCormack was one of thousands of cooks across Canada and the U.S who applied to be on the Favourite Chef this year. Her application was successful, and Columbia Valley residents, friends and family have been casting digital votes for McCormack ever since the 2024 version of the competition launched back in mid-May.

When the Pioneer last reported on McCormack in late May, she had just swept into the second round of the Favourite Chef — the top 20 — with relative ease, finishing third out of 60 competitors in the first round. Since then two more rounds have concluded, whittling the field down to the top 15 (third round of the competition), then the top 10. McCormack has not only survived those rounds, but thrived, and indeed as this issue of the Pioneer went to press she was perched first in the fourth round voting, leading the pack of 10 remaining chefs vying to reach the top five.

Readers can help McCormack (known to many locals through her involvement in the local food scene and as co-owner of From Scratch: A Mountain Kitchen in Fairmont Hot Springs) secure a  spot in the fifth round by casting a free vote online at favchef.com/2024/lara-mccormack. But don’t delay, as the online voting closes at 8 p.m. MDT on Thursday, June 20, the day this issue of the Pioneer lands in readers’ hands.

If McCormack wins — a genuine possibility given her vote tallies so far — she earns a $25,000 prize, will fly to New York to cook with celebrity chef Carla Hall at the James Beard House, and will be featured on the cover of Taste of Home magazine. McCormack said that if she wins the Favourite Chef, she’ll donate half the prize money to the Windermere District Farmers’ Institute to help get a proper roof over the Wednesday Agri-Park Farmers’ Market at the crossroads, and will use the other half of the prize money to pivot her business into personal cooking classes and to finish a cookbook she has been working on.

“I’m going to enjoy this ride and whatever it brings. I’m having fun,” McCormack previously told the Pioneer, speaking about the competition, adding that when it comes to cooking “whether I am cooking for my family, a client or 150 kids for a hot lunch, the amount of happiness I see over a meal keeps my soul and inspiration going.”