If you love macaroni and cheese dishes, you’ll want to mark your calendar for Aug. 20 when the O-Town MacDown takes place at Osceola Heritage Park. And through Friday (July 15), you can enter a sweepstakes for the chance to win four tickets to the event.
O-Town MacDown is a family friendly, mac and cheese cooking competition benefiting Give Kids The World Village. Sponsored by Subaru, the event gives professional chefs and restaurant cooks the opportunity to vie for the title of Orlando’s Mac-n-Cheese Champion. And attendees will benefit from their efforts with an invitation to sample their creations.
Cooking teams and individuals can register through July 20 by using this form. The cost is $100. So far, competitors include the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin, Radisson Resort Celebration, BJ’s Brewhouse, Bubba Gump and Second Harvest Food Bank. Awards for first through third will be presented for the two divisions, professional and restaurant. A Wildcard Award will honor the best non-traditional mac and cheese dish. Plus, guests will vote for their favorite, and a winner will receive the People’s Choice Award.
In addition to the food component, the event will include live entertainment; a kids’ fun zone with face painting, bounce houses and a macaroni art station; cooking demonstrations by chefs; and vendor booths.
Attendance and participation at the O-Town MacDown benefits Give Kids The World Village, a 70-acre, nonprofit resort in Central Florida that provides weeklong, cost-free vacations to children with life-threatening illnesses and their families.
To enter the O-Town MacDown Sweepstakes with a chance to win four tickets to the event, click here for the entry form and the official rules. One entry per person is allowed. Just for entering, you will receive the winning recipe from last year’s competition.
Tickets for the O-Town MacDown are on sale now online at a discount:
** $15 for adults, which includes all the mac-n-cheese you can eat.
** $10 for kids ages 3-12, which includes all the mac-n-cheese you can eat and the Kids Zone. (Ages 2 and younger are free.)
Tickets at the door will be $20 for adults and $15 for kids. Parking is free. The event takes place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Osceola Heritage Park, 1875 Silver Spur Lane, Kissimmee, Florida 34744.
About 3,000 people are expected to attend the 2016 O-Town MacDown.
Thanks for telling us about this, Kristin. It was a lot of fun! Now, how do we find out which chefs/restaurants won the competition?
KRISTIN: Give Kids The World Village posted this on its Facebook page: Oodles of noodles came together to raise $32,246.62 for the Village at #OTownMacDown2016! Congratulations to T-Rex Cafe-Disney Springs and Le Cordon Bleu Orlando for their first place wins, Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin for snagging the Wild Card, and reigning People’s Choice champions Hard Rock Cafe Orlando — your mac-n-cheese is just too Gouda to be true!