A Bel Air chef was named World Seafood Champion in Indianapolis in October, netting him $10,000 and pushing him through to the Final Table for a chance to win $150,000.
Michael Everd, 39, of Bel Air, has been cooking since he was 15 years old, and earned his bachelor’s in culinary arts and science from the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport.
“With culinary school, they really don’t tell you the whole truth,” he said. “They’re teaching you the basics. … To actually become a chef, you had to put the work in.”
While in school, Everd completed an internship at Roy’s, a Harbor East restaurant that closed in 2020. There, he learned that to become a chef he would have to sacrifice family, friends and holiday events.
“I had to make a choice: Complete my internship and miss my grandmother’s 80th birthday, or do another year,” he said. “I was so dedicated to what I wanted to do in life.”
He ended up missing his grandmother’s 80th birthday celebration.
“I was 100% all in and those are the things they don’t teach you in culinary school,” he said.
Throughout his 25-year career, Everd worked as a sous chef at Roy’s for eight years, working primarily with seafood, which he called “unforgiving,” and worked as an executive chef at Ouzo Bay in Harbor East.
Currently, Everd serves as corporate executive chef at The Local, where he oversees the Fallston and Nottingham locations. Alongside the owner of The Local, Zack Trabbold, Everd opened Natalie’s Seafood Kitchen in Fallston in May.
Last year’s seafood championship
This isn’t Everd’s first time at the World Food Championships. Last year, he qualified for the seafood championship after preparing a blackened catfish sushi roll with pickled asparagus and avocados. He smoked the catfish, made it into an aioli and placed it on top of the roll, garnishing with a mango salsa.
He finished tenth after preparing a crispy skin branzino with a yuzu fluid gel, coffee leeks, roasted artichokes and tomatoes with ginger wasabi. Although he didn’t win, he was given an automatic bid this year after making the championship in 2024.
“For me, it’s almost like a full circle because of how the journey started,” Everd said. “That title is mine this year and I’m going to do everything I can to get it.”
Dishes for two rounds
This year, the World Food Championships was held at the Indiana State Fairgrounds & Event Center. A maximum of 20 chefs can compete at once, with two rounds to the competition. For the opening rounds, the chefs have two hours, and they spend most of the first 30 minutes prepping: filling pots with water and preheating the oven.
“It’s a fun environment; everybody’s super friendly and excited for everybody regardless of how they place,” Everd said. “Everyone wants everyone to do well.”
In the first round, Everd prepared a furikake-seared ahi tuna with a blood orange ponzu sauce. It earned him a “judge’s pick” and pushed him through to the finals.
For the final round, the chefs faced a mystery challenge: they had to create a dish with Bolner’s Fiesta Orange Pepper rub and a mystery item — which turned out to be Sam’s Club brand Marker’s Mark Petit Dill Pickles.
For his dish, Everd herb-seared scallops with buttered corn, combining it with a beurre blanc sauce, yuzu avocado crema and a bacon pickle relish.
The chefs faced panel of judges and received on-the-spot critiques of their dishes.
“Luckily enough, for me, they only had positive [things] to say,” Everd said. “There are times where they will bash a chef for the things that they did to the dish, how they executed it or if its overcooked or undercooked.”
Before the competition, Everd’s wife said she thought he would win, he said, and he hoped she was right.
When the chef he thought might win was awarded second, and the competition host made eye contact with him, he said, he realized he’d won.
“It took me a full second to realize that was actually my name [he called],” Everd said. “I was shell-shocked.”
Will compete in the ‘Final Table’ next spring
Everd won $10,000, a trophy, a medal, a bag of cooking tools and a chance to compete for $150,000.
In spring 2026, the 10 champions from each category will compete against one another at The Final Table. Everd doesn’t know what he’ll cook for The Final Table, but he plans to wear his good-luck charm: a plastic bracelet that his 7-year-old son gave him before he headed to Indianapolis.
“I trust my palate; I trust my flavors; I trust myself,” he said. “The best thing you [can] do is bet on yourself and trust your instincts and it works. Will it work again? You never know.”
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