Denver celebrated two champions on Sunday, January 19: The Broncos’ victory as AFC champions, and Chef Leah Eveleigh as the winner of the Food Network’s Cutthroat Kitchen series. Chef Leah, who is a private chef and caterer in Colorado, battled three other chefs on the show, which is hosted by Alton Brown and in its second season. Chef Leah is the first chef to compete from Denver.

Cutthroat Kitchen is a reality-based culinary competition that pits four chefs against each other through cutthroat strategies, mind games and crazy sabotages dreamed up by host Alton Brown, himself a celebrity chef who’s familiar to viewers as the host of Iron Chef America. Cutthroat Kitchen is a cooking show with many evil twists and turns, in which competitors are given $25,000 to bid for sabotages to inflict on each other while they cook. A judge votes off a chef after each round until the winner is left standing.

Over 100 fans of the show and of Eveleigh cheered her on at LoDo’s Highlands Ranch as she was forced to suffer daunting obstacles: powering a blender by pedaling a bicycle, creating soup without being allowed to taste the flavor, and being forced to use sardines from a bucket of bait for a fish fry. She overcame each sabotage and won the judge’s approval. The crowd roared their approval when Eveleigh was announced the winner.

Eveleigh’s accomplishment celebrates the rich cultural diversity of Denver’s great culinary scene.

Chef Leah Eveleigh made her culinary debut at the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival as the annual event’s first Filipino food vendor and then created Tropical Grill Catering. She’s truly one of festival’s success stories, and she’s about to launch the next phase of her career operating Chef Leah’s Kitchen, as a private chef and giving cooking demonstrations in addition to catering.

Her website will launch next week: www.leaheveleigh.com