Marietta Chef Meets Defeat on 'Chopped All-Stars'

Food Network redemption would have been sweet for Marietta’s Justin Balmes, but an overly sweet strawberry sauce on Chopped All-Stars sent him away disappointed again Sunday night.

Balmes, Vic “Vegas” Moea, Patty Davidi and Chris Nirschel faced off in the three-round cooking contest to win money for charity and  on Food Network Star.

Balmes was hoping to win Sunday night, then win the Chopped All-Stars final in two weeks to earn $50,000 for the SafePath Children's Advocacy Center. He has .

“When I get into the Chopped kitchen, I’m gonna kill it,” Balmes said.

He got off to a good start during the appetizer round, when each chef had to use razor clams, breakfast radishes, green grape tomatoes and shrimp paste.

He steamed the clams in a Thai broth, which he paired with a radish salad.

“I was floored by Justin,” judge Amanda Freitag said. “His dish was so well-balanced.”

Nirschel was chopped for overwhelming his clams with truffle oil.

Balmes, who cut his culinary teeth as a butcher and fishmonger at , figured to be in his comfort zone in the entrée round, which featured culotte steak along with Okinawa sweet potatoes, turnips and strawberry leather.

He did his Southern roots proud with his turnip greens and added a successful sweet potato puree, despite wasting more than a minute battling a balky food processor.

But his steak was too rare for the judges, and the sauce he made with the strawberry leather was, in the words of judge Aaron Sanchez, “cloyingly sweet.”

Balmes might have been able to overcome the rare meat, particularly after Davidi and Moea brutally overcooked their steaks, but the sweet sauce sank him and left a bitter taste in his mouth.

He walked away mumbling and cursing. “Penny and Vic are not even close to the same level of cooking,” Balmes said. “They’re—no. No, no, no, no, no.”

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