San Tan Valley resident vies to become nation’s ‘Favorite Chef’

From watching his mother cook to working in high-end restaurants, Scott Abad’s life has always revolved around food.

Now the San Tan Valley resident and veteran chef is poised to make himself a household name.

Abad has advanced to the national quarterfinals of the 2026 Favorite Chef competition, which raises funds for the prestigious James Beard Foundation. The online competition is run by Colossal.org.

The grand prize is $25,000, a featured two-page profile in Taste of Home magazine, and an exclusive cooking session with celebrity chef Carla Hall.

Last year, Abad entered the competition on a lark and ended up placing fourth in the nation.

“I didn’t even push it that hard because I was working at Fort McDowell Casino, working a lot of hours. I ran three restaurants over there … I was surprised, and then I found out like it can be over 90,000 (competitors) and I didn’t know also it was between U.S. and Canada.

“This year everybody’s like, ‘You’re going to win it. And I’m telling them, ‘You know, fourth place I was pretty happy with,” Abad said.

Born in New Jersey, Abad and his family moved to Arizona 30 years ago. While he had other interests growing up, he always came back to cooking.

“My mom was a stay-at-home mom, and she was always cooking in the kitchen. When I wasn’t playing football, I was in the kitchen with my mom,” he said. “I love to do my mom’s cooking. She taught me a lot.”

At just 15, Abad started his culinary career as a busboy at a Sam Fox restaurant, while his cousin worked as a cook.

One day, a cook didn’t show up for work, and the chef allowed Abad, 16, to make salads.

“I started out as pantry cook and then I moved to the sauté cook and then I worked the grills and pizza,” he said.

In his more than two decades in the industry, he has worked at Fred’s at Barneys New York in Scottsdale, Different Pointe of View at Pointe Hilton Tapatio Cliffs Resort, the Arizona Biltmore, The Buttes Marriott and various other locations around the Valley.

But it was his time at Different Pointe of View that molded his outlook on cooking. At the restaurant, he worked with James Beard Award-nominated Chef Anthony DeMuro who eventually became an important mentor to Abad.

DeMuro was the one who encouraged Abad to work on his dream of being a chef when culinary school was financially out of reach.

“He told me, ‘All these kids at a culinary school, they come to my restaurant, and they work for me and they don’t realize how hard a real kitchen is, and then they end up quitting and joining a different industry and wasting all that money,’” Abad recalled. “He said, 'Don’t go to school right now. Learn as much as you can from me and then when you think you’ve learned enough, go to the next chef and learn as much as you can from him and then so on and so on until you become your own chef.’ And I did that.”

To spend more time with his wife and children, Abad now works as director of culinary experience at Acoya Troon, a senior living community in Scottsdale.

“Taking care of these people here really means a lot more than working in the regular restaurants where people come and go and you kind of never see them again,” Abad said. “It feels like I’m more than a chef here. I feel almost like a doctor. I take care of them with my food.”

Abad may be out of the traditional restaurant experience for now, but he still has the urge to create new signature dishes, which he does through his catering company Flamingo Viands Catering. By winning the Favorite Chef competition, Abad can take his catering business to the next level.

“I’ve been trying to get it going and I bought a lot of the equipment, I bought a food truck, but as an executive chef (you don’t) get the hours,” he said. “I get to cater events when I can, but I’m trying to grow and make it bigger and start my own business.”

Abad also wants to be a mentor to young people interested in a culinary career much like DeMuro of Different Pointe of View was for him.

“I’ve been mentoring my whole life. All these kids and even adults,” he said. “Being there with my crew every single day, they really support me … I mentored a lot of people where they moved on and some of them went into the military, some of them became chefs and even more.”

Voting in the quarterfinals begins on July 13, ending on July 23. If he earns the top spot in his group, Abad will then move on to the semifinals, with voting starting on July 24 and ending July 30. If Abad moves to the finals, voting will begin on July 31 and end Aug. 6. The winner will be announced on or before Sept. 3.

To vote for Abad, visit his page on the Favorite Chef website. People can vote once each day for free with donations to the James Beard Foundation increasing the number of votes allowed.

Janet Perez can be reached at jperez@iniusa.org. Please send your comments about this article to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.