Robert Irvine to host military cooking contest at the Tropicana

More than 50 active-duty military will face off for the title of Armed Forces Culinary Grand Champion. The global military chefs will work in 15 teams of four bringing together military members from all branches during this hand-to-pan competition. Co-sponsored by Veterans Support Network, the teams will cook their way through the event for prizes, pride and more.

“Las Vegas is continuing to thrive as a top culinary destination, and I am excited to host this one-of-a-kind culinary competition at the Tropicana Las Vegas,” said Robert. “As a former member of the British Royal Navy, I am looking forward to seeing top culinary talent among the military branches come together in celebration of Veterans Day Weekend.”

To complement the competition, Robert will host a meet-and-greet from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday. Guests are invited to mix and mingle as he signs copies of his newest book, “Fit Fuel: A Chef’s Guide to Eating Well, Getting Fit and Living Your Best Life.” The Military Culinary Competition takes place in the Trinidad Pavilion from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Entry is free and open to the public.

Robert told me why it’s such an important event for him: “I spend about 150 days a year working with our military across the world. We just opened up our first restaurant in The Pentagon. We’re working with the military to change the way food is done for them. The culinary competition is another step in that direction of how do we take care of our modern war fighters with their food?

MREs WON’T EVER DISAPPEAR

“We update and buy equipment, we buy all the stuff to fight wars, but we’ll never get rid of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). Think about the hotspots where our troops serve for our freedom: Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea. They don’t have camps, they don’t have kitchen setups immediately, so MREs I don’t think will ever disappear.

“Can they get better? Absolutely. We haven’t changed MREs in 52 years, the package itself all the way down to the food that’s in it. It’s got to be able to drop 50,000, 60,000 feet. It must remain intact and not get crushed. American MREs are pretty different, too, compared to what we had in the British military. We used a lot of canned food and Spam.

“I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of MREs, but I think that we can refine them. We can make sure the food that we serve in the military bases, where they have galleries and kitchens set up, is better, fresher, healthier, more nutritious, and we serve it more often instead of those traditional three meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

“It should be every 2 1/2 to 3 hours. They stand on their feet 18 to 20 hours doing their jobs outdoors, digging holes, for weeks on end. We got to make sure that we can feed them properly.”

I asked Robert if feeding the military properly was one of the biggest challenges a chef could face. “The challenges are easy to deal with,” he told me. “The military has some great locations and great chefs. The biggest challenge is money and how to use it the best way possible to make sure we feed these folks in the best possible way.”

Robert says he’ll be back in Las Vegas before Christmas after the Military Culinary Competition to announce the name of his debut Las Vegas restaurant at the Tropicana and the type of food he’ll serve. Construction is underway, and he’s set a timetable for March to start working on service and food. He plans to be open by next July.

FRESH KITCHEN AT THE PENTAGON

The star of Food Network’s “Restaurant Impossible” who has just opened his restaurant Fresh Kitchen at The Pentagon told me: “I’m going to trickle out all the Las Vegas details slowly so you don’t get bored, but I will tell you that there’s nothing like it in Las Vegas now. It’s a whole new style of food, too.

“You thought Las Vegas had everything now, but did any other executive chef rappel down the side of a 260-foot building like I did? I want to keep it secret so we remain unique and are different. I think this restaurant is definitely going to be different, and I mean different — nothing like it in Las Vegas, that’s for sure. We want it to be a real destination restaurant.

“We opened in The Pentagon a couple of weeks ago, and we’ve already got thousands of people a week through it, one day a thousand people alone. It’s become the destination for our military, and it wasn’t easy. There are no phones in The Pentagon. It was a top secret restaurant. When you walk into the building itself, phones go dead, so imagine trying to put point-of-sale promotional material up in a building that has no phones!

“Nobody could get into it from the outside. If James Bond and Jason Bourne sat down together for lunch, you wouldn’t even know who they were, it’s that secret. Our approach to food was completely different. We’re going to make the Tropicana restaurant a destination for locals and tourists. It’s going to be really exciting.

“You’ve got Gordon (Ramsay), you’ve got Guy (Fieri), you’ve got every main chef on the planet. I want to make a difference. It’s not about me and my name. It’s about the experience you have when you’re there. We have to be above the usual approach to food. The menu is great, and I think that’s what you’re going to see that you’ve never seen before. We achieved that at The Pentagon, and we’re going to do the same thing in the Tropicana.

“As an English guy living in the United States, it’s interesting to go in and do something completely different with health, wellness and conflict. It’s also nerve-wracking because you do have all those other celebrity chefs to contend with, so it’s either put up or shut up.

“I served in the British Navy for 10 years, so coming into Las Vegas, I’m going to call on that military attitude and experience to take on the other kitchen warriors. For me, it’s going to be take no prisoners.”