Kellams: In about 13 days, Chef Elizabeth Brown will be representing the United States at the 2026 WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai. She'll be in China with her coach, Greg Beachey, competing against chefs from scores of other nations. She's prepping at Brightwater: A Center for the Study of Food in Bentonville. And this week, she took some time to talk with me. Also part of our conversation with Chef Marshall Shafkowitz, executive director of Brightwater. Elizabeth, or Lizzie, as she's known to her friends, says she was a curious child who became interested in culinary skills when she was quite young. And she says WorldSkills Competition is not like the cooking reality shows we see on television.
Brown: This competition is focused more on the skill set and the sanitary efficiency. You know, knowing how to work in a kitchen in the best way possible. And overall, this whole organization is about teaching students for career readiness. And so I'm still technically one of those students. And so these competitions are really trying to simulate what it would be like to be in a career. And they judge you based off of that.
Kellams: So give me an idea of what it might be like the first hour or two of one of these competitions.
Brown: The first hour is talking to your world expert, in which in China I won't be able to speak to them outside of. I can text them, but I can't see them. So beforehand it's I finally get to see my expert. I finally get to talk to you, because a couple days before they'll have given us mystery ingredients. I won't find out part of my competition until I get there. And then we'll also be talking as a group. They're going to debrief us on the day. We'll probably have to talk to restaurant, the restaurant competition, because they will be working with us in maneuvering service time. Yeah. And then it'll go into competing and starting to prep food.
Kellams: Okay. So mystery ingredient. So everybody's facing the mystery ingredient, of course. So no one has the advantage. Do you prep for it? Like you try to get a knowledge of every kind of ingredient you can?
Brown: Yeah. I mean, you have to have a basic knowledge going into competitions like these of ingredients. You have to know the area because obviously they use different food vendors in China than we do. So, you know, we might be talking about eggs, but they don't usually refrigerate their eggs, things like that. You know, it's things like that you have to go into knowing ahead of time. And so that's part of practicing is knowing ingredients.
Kellams: So tell me, this is the second time I've been here to talk to someone in this role at Brightwater. What is the role that Brightwater and NWACC play here?
Shafkowitz: Oh wow. So Brightwater plays a very unique role when it comes to SkillsUSA. We are the academic partner for the national competition. And with that, because we have this amazing facility, we've made the call to say when we have a WorldSkills competitor, they're going to come to Brightwater and practice. So we open our doors. We welcome the competitor, as we did with Novirah, and now we have with Lizzie, and we bring the coach in.
In this case here, it's very special. We have the opportunity to have Lizzie here for a month. So she's been here. This is week two of that month practicing day in and day out. And what we do with that is we allow faculty, students, the community, chefs from the community to come in and give Lizzie feedback. So she's getting a lot of voices to help her build up those skill sets of product that she may never have seen something different. Because in China, when they're in Shanghai, they're going to get mystery ingredients. And it says mystery country ingredient on the book.
So four days of competition, 18 hours of actual competition time. And during that time, imagine trying to go through a competition without being able to speak to your coach. So what we're doing is every day we're prepping and we're running through either components of the competition or a full competition day. And I get to play mystery ingredient. I go to our chefs or I go to our storeroom manager and say, hey, give me something. I don't want to know what it is. Pick it. And we're going to bring it to Lizzie to see how she integrates it into the menu that she's been working for.
Kellams: It's as far away as you can get. So completely different time zone. How are you going to make sure you're rested and ready to go?
Brown: Well, on the way there, I normally take some sort of sleepy drink and I sleep the entire way, and then when I wake up, I stay up. And last time that I went to a time zone, similar. I went to Australia this past summer to compete in like a mock competition. And I slept and I just stayed up. And then I had a really good. I went to bed at nine, woke up at five and it was great. Otherwise, yeah, I think I'm hoping for that. Jet lag didn't hit until I got back. So the rest of the thing that. And then I started to journal a bit and that kind of helps get my mind together and kind of wind me down. So in that kind of mental rest as well.
Kellams: If I were talking to somebody who was going to the World Cup, they, you know, they take their kit. If I talk to a lacrosse player, they have their stick. What do you have of yours that you take with you?
Brown: So I have a knife bag. My coach, Greg Beachey, he works for Zwilling as well. And so he's got me this nice knife bag and they give us specified tools that we're allowed to bring. So I've got my suitcase, got my knife bag and chef's hat, apron, chef coat. That's kind of, that's my tool kit there.
Kellams: If this were in Rhode Island, the smallest state, there'd still be. The mystery ingredient still has multiple possibilities. It could be clams, it could be lobsters, whatever. China's huge.
Brown: Yeah, huge. The mystery ingredient could be anything. It really could be anything. It could be a condiment. It could be a vegetable. It could be greens or meat or anything. So my main focus on this is coming up with a strategy and then backup plan. So it's almost like a formula in my mind. It's a plug in and plug out. And then if something really does, you know, put me through a time warp or something, you know, I will be able to text my coach and text you guys here at Brightwater to get just some ideas and see what we can do. But for the most part, everything should stay semi the same.
Kellams: So it could be a protein, but it could be a vinegar.
Shafkowitz: So when you're thinking about the black box, because every day each competitor will receive a new black box and you're only prepping for that day. Nothing gets carried over to the next day. So what they have shared with us when we look at our manuals is for this course, you'll have a mystery vegetable. For this course, you may have a mystery meat or fish or shellfish. So we have to plan accordingly of we're going to do this base. And if we put a meat on it, this is an adjustment. If we do, if it has a shellfish on it, we're going to do this adjustment. And that's helped. And Lizzie and I have had lots of conversations and lots of text messages back to back to Chef Greg on, hey, this is what we discussed. What do you think? So everybody stays in that loop of what we've been talking about and then it's producing it.
Brown: We just got our pantry list and our amuse. We had to make a change and we can't share what we're making.
Shafkowitz: And it's more because people, people listen. And this is a big competition and it's really hard to explain what WorldSkills is, because unless you've actually been there. I had the fortunate opportunity to go to Lyon and watch the WorldSkills competition that was there and walk around the gigantic conference center. It was like 3 million square feet of conference center, 168 competitions. Everybody is vying for that podium. So nobody shares what they're making. But we found out no tomatoes on the pantry list.
Okay, so we're two weeks away from the competition and we're making changes now. And typically, like when I was competing, I would go in and I would practice, this is what I'm doing, and I'd be bringing all my ingredients with me. Reality is, when Lizzie goes, she can bring her knife kit on the floor. She has to wear a very certain uniform, very specific colors. It's down to what kind of shoes you can wear.
Kellams: Finally, you mentioned you were a curious child. You want your mom? What do you think it was about this that hooked you?
Brown: Honestly, when I started working in the kitchen, just even as a student, I felt confident in myself. And it was one thing that I felt was mine. You know, all of my sisters, I'm the baby of the family. All of, you know, my sisters had their thing, and they were all very smart at a certain thing and had their niche. And I kind of was waiting for mine. And I found it in the kitchen.
And ever since then, like the love from being a student and just learning what a knife cut was or what a stock. Look, what stock is and those things. And then moving on to working in a little restaurant and still being a student, but also working in high school, like I loved that. And then every single way that the kitchen has changed for me, even through a competition, how different that is through professional, you know, whether it's a hut on the beach or, you know, James Beard restaurant, you know, all of those changes, I've still came to love working in a kitchen. And so that's one thing that just probably that's why I think this will stick with me for a while and why I chose this as my career. Because yeah, it's brought me confidence and is the one thing that I can't seem to shake.
Kellams: You'll be up during the competition because you're in the loop.
Shafkowitz: I will get updates. I'm going to be here in Bentonville with the rest of the Brightwater staff and students.
Brown: WeChat.
Shafkowitz: Yep. WeChat. I'm gonna stick with WhatsApp. But Greg and Lizzie will send us notes. And we're all cheering for Lizzie. It's, as I said to a few chefs that have been around, we're polishing a diamond at this point. Lizzie is an incredible young culinarian. But more importantly, she's an incredible human being. And every student that has walked in, she has been gracious to give them time. Faculty. She's listened to their feedback very graciously. And sometimes feedback hurts. But these are the kind of people we want to have coming into our industry, leading our industry in the future. And Lizzie is that example.
And again, we're humbled as Brightwater is Northwest Arkansas Community College to have the opportunity and the ability to open our doors to help train a WorldSkills competitor. You know, Northwest Arkansas is growing, and this is our second opportunity to have a WorldSkills competitor here. We've hosted the American Culinary Federation's Olympic culinary team. We're kind of on the map known for helping these teams and individuals get ready to showcase and represent the United States. And there's nothing more humbling than to say we played a small part in getting them on that world stage, and we hope Lizzie comes back renewed, excited. And maybe with some hardware.
Kellams: Yeah. Thank you both for your time.
Brown: Absolutely. Thank you.
Shafkowitz: Absolutely.
Kellams: The conversation with Chef Elizabeth Brown and Chef Marshall was recorded at Brightwater: A Center for the Study of Food in Bentonville Tuesday morning. Brightwater is a division of Northwest Arkansas Community College. Lizzie, who grew up in Columbia, Missouri, will continue to prepare for the competition at Brightwater for the next 13 days or so, then head to Shanghai for the 2026 WorldSkills Competition.
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