What’s a chef smackdown between friends?

Paul Becking, C Street Bistro

By Janet Eastman

No one has rounded up the superstar chefs of the Rogue Valley and asked them to, um, battle it out over burners. Until now.

Organizers of the four-day Southern Oregon World of Wine Festival in Jacksonville are turning up the heat on culinary fun. For their gala dinner in Bigham Knoll’s ballroom on Friday, Aug. 26, they are:

pouring WOW’s 2011 award-winning wines chosen from 150 entries

serving a five-course dinner

providing live music

presenting a slideshow of all the growers and winemakers who tease flavors out of Southern Oregon grapes

and, in all good fun, they are lining up chefs – who respect each other’s work, who have sometimes worked together, who sometimes socialize together, who pat each other on the back when one wins recognition – to compete over the judges’ and the audience’s vote for the best dish made on the spot.

The five chefs:

Matthew Domingo of Farm to Fork Events, who has successfully seated discriminating diners at tables in fields with local farmers, winemakers and artisan food producers

Neil Clooney of Ashland’s Smithfield’s Restaurant and Bar, who has won the statewide top chef competition two years in a row and has put oxtail and other neglected meats back on meat-centric menus

Paul Becking of C Street Bistro, who gave up a popular restaurant in Santa Barbara to open a kitchen with culinary verve in a cottage in Jacksonville

Neil Clooney, Smithfield's Restaurant and Bar

Chris Berg of Elements Tapes Bar and Lounge who made downtown Medford a place you drive to at night for laughs, wine and paella

Alan Anderson of Medford’s Rogue Valley Manor, who has to please hundreds of palates a night.

Who will win? Everyone in the ballroom that night.

For more information:

The WOW experience is now four days long:

Aug. 24: Welcome Cocktail Reception ($25)

Aug. 25-26: Wine education classes by Dwayne Kershaw of the Southern Oregon Wine Institute ($30)

Aug. 26: Gala Dinner ($125)

Aug. 27: Grand Tasting ($75)

Bigham Knoll Campus, 525 Bigham Knoll (525 F Street), home of the historic 1908 Jacksonville Old School. www.worldofwinefestival.com