17-03-2025
Cheezy's Grilled Cheeses creates vegan Chipotle Philly for Rockford Chef Contest
ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) — 21 restaurants are competing in the 2025 Vegan Chef Contest, offering vegan menu items for those in the community.
Co-organizer of the contest Shanasy Bratt said she began the challenge to bring more awareness of people's desire to eat more humanely and sustainably.
In 2024, 17 restaurants participated. Co-organizer Amy Belle said the growth of the competition in just one year is promising.
'There are a lot of returning restaurants that had a great time participating last year and wanted to challenge themselves to create new dishes again this year,' Belle said. 'There are new restaurants that our volunteers have gone around and recruited and let them know what was going on and they wanted to be a part of it, too.'
Cheezy's Grilled Cheeses on 11th Street is a returning competitor. Owner Dustin DiBenedetto said competing was no question, since the bread they use is Keto, gluten and vegan friendly.
'We have a great friend, Amy, who's really big into the vegan community that helped us out and got us involved in that,' DiBenedetto said. 'She had reached out and said 'Hey, would you like to get involved in the challenge?' We've always been able to incorporate vegan, gluten free, keto and we want to be able to give those options to everyone so everyone can eat.'
DiBenedetto said the restaurant even recreated its most popular menu item and made it vegan, so customers can expect to see a vegan Chipotle Philly on the menu.
'This is our number one seller, and we wanted to make it vegan,' DiBenedetto said. 'I'm hoping to take first place. We're grinding and we're making great sandwiches.'
Cheezy's sits in 4th place in the competition as of Sunday.
The runs until March 31.
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