Chef Brody Olive will represent Alabama in a national cooking event after winning the Alabama Seafood Cook-Off recently held in Orange Beach.

Olive, who works at Voyagers restaurant at Perdido Beach Resort, was one of four finalists who competed in the Monday evening event presented by Alabama Gulf Seafood. His gaff-top catfish with flash-fried mole crabs, gulf shrimp horseradish cream, pickled purslane and smoked paprika coral tuile was chosen from a slate that included dishes from three other chefs: Sam Adams of small batch in Birmingham, Lawrence Agnew of Jesse’s Restaurant in Magnolia Springs and Nicholas Song of The Depot in Auburn.

Olive, who worked with fellow chef Luis Silvestre, will represent Alabama at the Great American Seafood Cook-Off, to be held later this summer in New Orleans.

“There’s nothing better than Alabama Gulf Seafood and the diversity of our Gulf, and I am proud to showcase this and what makes the area so special,” said Olive. “At [Voyagers], we are proud to showcase our fisherman and farmers — whoever is growing and getting recipe ingredients to us — and to tell their stories and their hard work. They make our work easy.”

The cook-off was held at Zeke’s Restaurant in Orange Beach. According to information provided by Alabama Gulf Seafood, judges included Jim Smith, founder and executive chef of The Hummingbird Way in Mobile and chairman of the Alabama Seafood Marketing Commission; Chris Nelson, president of Bon Secour Fisheries; Susan Benton, founder of gulfcoastrestaurants.com and 30Aeats.com; and Jeffrey Compton, 2022 ASCO Champion and partner/executive chef of Armour House in Birmingham.

Adams was runner-up with a “Mediterranean summer meets Birmingham” concept. It featured seared Gulf red snapper over Gulf crab salad, with boiled peanut hummus, cornmeal fried squash, fried capers, saffron beurre l’orange and herb salad.