Name: Sarah Grueneberg's Winning chicken parm
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 1 h
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (6 oz each), pounded to ¼-inch thickness; 1 cup all-purpose flour; 2 large eggs; 1 cup panko breadcrumbs, finely ground; ¾ cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano; 2 tsp kosher salt, divided; 1 tsp freshly cracked black pepper; ½ tsp garlic powder; 1 cup San Marzano tomato sauce (no sugar added); 2 cloves garlic, minced; 1 cup whole milk mozzarella, shredded; 3 tbsp fresh basil, chiffonade; ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

The first chef in this ledger walked into Bobby Flay's kitchen on February 12, 2013 — the show's premiere episode — and beat him with chicken parm.

Grueneberg was already a James Beard nominee and Top Chef finalist at the time. She'd come out of Spiaggia, the Chicago temple of Italian fine dining where she ran the kitchen for years. Bobby's mistake, in retrospect, was thinking that a guy who grills can out-bread a woman who fries chicken in a sauce of San Marzano tomatoes she imports for a living.

Her version is closer to a Milanese than a Brooklyn red-sauce parm: pounded thin, fried hard in olive oil, finished briefly under a quick tomato. She is now the chef-owner of Monteverde in Chicago's West Loop, which is a James Beard Best New Restaurant winner and is, on most weeknights, impossible to book.