Jacob Picking didn’t expect to compete for 2026 Club + Resort Chef of the Year. And he certainly didn’t expect to win.
The Executive Chef of Blue Hills Country Club in Kansas City, Mo., had been to the Chef to Chef Conference five times, so he’d watched other chefs compete. But he’d never been able to summon the nerve himself.
“I debated for days whether I was going to even apply—with the tab open on my computer,” Picking says. “I was still telling myself that I wouldn’t do it. And then I decided I needed to get over it.”
He bounced ideas off of a former colleague until landing on a variation of the dish he’d produce. As soon as he was selected, he started prepping, tapping coworkers to act as his apprentice and industry colleagues to help taste-test.
“From the list of [available] proteins, I felt most comfortable with whole duck. I thought I could produce a good product and good flavor within one hour.”
The winning entrée was a honey-glazed duck duo: roasted breast, duck meatball, potato purée, Swiss chard and bacon, duck jus, and pickled cherry.
“There are a lot of other things that go with duck, but I’ve made a lot of potatoes here in the Midwest,” says Picking. “I felt that I could make a really solid potato purée to go with the duck.”
Ultimately, he says, the flavor profile is an homage to the Midwest.
Midwestern Roots
Picking is originally from Abilene, Kansas. After working in a local restaurant, he decided to attend culinary school at Johnson County Community College.
One of his instructors was Todd Walline, Executive Chef of Blue Hills Country Club. In 2014, Picking joined him there, where they worked together for five years. In 2017, Walline won the C+R Chef of the Year title in the same competition.
“I worked pretty much every position: sauté, sous chef, chef de cuisine, and everything in between,” says Picking.
When Walline left in 2019, Picking was offered the Executive Chef position. Just as he was getting his bearings, the pandemic hit.
Today, Picking and his team are solid, and he brought both his sous chef and his chef de cuisine to Chef to Chef.
Blue Hills CC has 15 culinary team members, 600 members, and three dining venues. It does about $3 million in food and beverage revenue annually.
Menus are updated seasonally, save for a few favorites. Several are pasta dishes, all made in-house, thanks to a fresh pasta initiative Picking started about four years ago. The latest venture is a three-day-fermented pizza dough for the club’s new pizza program.
As far as his culinary style, Picking is classically trained, and he makes a point to “do things the right way.” Still, he clarifies that the membership is solidly Midwestern.
“In the Midwest, I think we always go back to meat and potatoes,” he says. “I always tell my team: It’s about flavor. A lot of these techniques or knife cuts, whatever they might be, don’t matter if [the food] doesn’t taste good, if you haven’t developed any flavor in the dish.”
Unlike last year’s Chef of the Year, Geoffrey Lanez, CMC, Executive Chef of The Patterson Club, Picking didn’t have much competition experience. But he was confident in his dish, and he worked well with his apprentice, Brian Roque, Executive Sous Chef of Paradise Valley (Ariz.) Country Club.
“He’s a great chef,” says Picking of Roque. “Calm, focused. He followed the timeline really well, and he’s just a good, all-around natural cook. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner.”
Despite Picking’s nerves—or maybe because of them—the dish the two executed was among the best versions Picking had created.
“I was so nervous that I didn’t look at [the crowd] or the judges,” he says. “I just focused on the food.”
Still, he never allowed himself to consider that he’d win.
“Last year, I felt you could see night-and-day differences between a couple of the competitors,” Picking recalls. “This year, I didn’t feel that way. … Personally, I thought that my other competitors might have made better dishes than I did. I thought there were a few more technical elements they had brought to the plate. But I was really confident in the dish that I practiced and the flavor that we produced.”
His advice for chefs considering applying for 2027? “Do it. But have a plan.”
“I didn’t expect to compete. I didn’t expect to win. I couldn’t be happier,” says Picking, adding that the Chef of the Year experience has given him the confidence to pursue more local and national culinary competitions.
