We asked the participants to describe themselves in their own words. This is what we have so far before team names have been decided. I'm not quite sure we knew what we were letting ourselves in for:

Team 1 - view and vote

Londonist Editor, Hazel Tsoi-Wiles, was born and raised in London (Zone 1) and, apart from a distressing three year enforced exile to a university town, has lived in London all her life. Along with many rambling, incoherent tales of her early days as an irregular food, arts and news contributor for Londonist before becoming Editor in May 2007, she has a long and varied tale of growing up in London following theatre, art, culture and anything with obscenities in the title, or naked people painted purple doing improvised dance. With a day job at a national newspaper and an inability to turn down the chance to be on TV, she is all media, all the time, and usually available for comment but not before the first of two strong coffees in the morning.

Londonist's Food & Drink Editor, Chris Osburn, would like to tell people that he hails from London, but his American accent would betray such a flagrant lie. However, when he first moved here in 2001, he felt disconcertingly at home. Currently residing at the western front of the East End (otherwise known as Clerkenwell) Chris works as a freelance photojournalist, does his best to keep track of London's bewildering art scene and enjoys foraging for new lunch spots.

Team 2 - view and vote

Richard Moross, 30, is a terrible cook, an OK photographer and a fairly successful entrepreneur. He is the founder and Chief Executive of moo.com, a leading British startup, was named in the Times Newspaper's '40 under 40' list, and in the Telegraph's 1,000 most powerful people in British business, and has previously worked for Imagination, sorted.com and the BBC.

Russell Davies, old, is such a bad cook, and so against cooking in general that he's created two massive websites and a book publishing empire devoted to cafes, so he never has to cook. That being said, he's always willing to muck in. He worked in advertising for thousands of years creating awesomely awesome work for the likes of Microsoft, Nike and Honda before quitting because it was no fun. He's now trying to use his powers for good by mucking about with all sorts of digital and post-digital stuff.

Team 3 - view and vote

Julia Parsons from England and Sara Maternini from Italy share a love of cooking and food blogging.

Julia is an IT professional with a passionate interest in home cooking and food writing, and the author of the 'A Slice of Cherry Pie' food blog. Julia is an active member of the food blogging community and founded the 'UK Food Bloggers Association', a growing community of food bloggers based in the UK.

Sara is the blogger, social media manager and web marketing assistant of San Lorenzo, an Italian food company selling on-line high quality Italian food. She also writes her own food blog 'The Kitchen Pantry', established in January 2006, first in Italian, then in English since September 2006.

Team 4 - view and vote

Tom Reynolds is an Emergency Medical Technician for the London Ambulance Service. Most people call him an 'ambulance driver'. Based in East London he has been writing the blog Random Acts Of Reality (http://randomreality.blogware.com) about his experiences for the past five years. Previous to working for the ambulance service he trained as a teacher and was also an A&E nurse. Tom had his first book (Blood, Sweat and Tea) published by the Friday Project and a sequel is to be published. Tom's interests include saving the NHS, Creative commons and copyright reform, and anything involving the internet or the future. He is currently looking for a nice cup of tea.

Samantha Sigler is a law student and future music lawyer from Canada and regular reviewer on TrustedPlaces.com. An avid traveler and amateur linguist, she has travelled substantially, always in search of languages, food, and music.

Team 5 - view and vote

LJ Rich is a technology presenter on national TV, a trained opera singer and concert pianist, and sometime stand-up comic. She has Perfect Pitch and can tell you what key you speak in. LJ’s studied Music at Oxford, sound engineered for Pete Waterman, exited aeroplanes at 10,000ft, driven steam trains and played keyboards in a force 8 gale at sea. LJ presents tech for QVC, shoots videoblogs for VirginMedia, and recently popped up on LBC and BBC. She’s always been a discerning eater, and watches far too much food TV and sci-fi in her downtime. LJ loves blogging, using industry contacts to help readers sneak peeks at new consumer technology as well as talking about geek life and trying to keep up in the new world of social media. Subscribe at http://ljrich.wordpress.com to get details on her new pilot programme “Gadget Spy” coming to Virgin soon. Contact lj@ljrich.com website www.ljrich.com

Genevieve Ross is a burlesque blogger and playwright better known as Tiara Diamond. She has been blogging since 2004 and began to specialise in her passion for burlesque early 2008. She began life as an actress and playwright, with her 2007 play 'Breakers' being performed at the cornerHOUSE festival. Her most recent work, 'The G-String Murders', is an adaptation of the novel by Gypsy Rose Lee. Tiara Diamond's adventures in the burlesque community saw her post on the London Burlesque Festival featured in 21stcenturypinups.net. She has a love of food and baking which comes second only to her love of dressing up and taking her clothes off!

Team 6 - view and vote

Antony Ribot has three passions: mobile UI design, rusticity (the French sort) and food (especially North African cuisine). Frodo-like by looks, hungry by nature and inspired by ants, bees and termites. When he's not eating, he's an entrepreneur, designer, developer and co-founder of seaside-based design house, ribot, focusing on innovating user interfaces and user experiences for small screen devices. If something looks tasty, make sure you hide it away from him or it won't be there when you turn back.

Mobile Evangelist/Expert, Geek, Actor, Blogger, Prancer, Gamer, Free Hugger and all round nice chap James Whatley, currently resides within the walls of SpinVox HQ looking after all their Social Media gubbins. He's been blogging for just over two years in a multitude of forms and has been cooking for even longer. He likes food but only up until recently when a spa trip to Thailand made him re-think his whole diet, (no fruit pre circa 2006). Can often be heard exclaiming: 'Mangos? AMAZING!' and also “THIS THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD!” Once referred to as ‘Terminally Optimistic’, James’ cup glass is always half full even when it’s empty. So even if he doesn’t win, he’ll be just be happy to be there. Awww...

Team 7 - view and vote

Jonathan Waddingham and Kai Chan Vong are both massive food fans– cooking it, eating it, and (most importantly) taking photos of it. This "competition" is therefore a microcosm of their lives.

Web designer and all round internet fan-boy, Kai Chan Vong, loves cooking and taking photos with his posh camera (specifically of food) – his flickr stream does not lie. Having worked as a sushi chef, it's a surprise that his menu includes no sushi whatsoever, but he's always one for new and exciting things (online). Kai works for Justgiving.com as a designer and you can pretty much follow everything he does on twitter. Or watch what he does on Vimeo. Or read what he's reading on del.icio.us. Or all of the above if he gives you a MOO card in person.

Hailing from Bedford, Jonathan Waddingham also works at Justgiving.com, but on the charity side of things as the "charity champion"; he helps them use the site and the internet in general through the JG charities blog, webinars and videos. Jon is often ridiculed for his love of food photography and posting pictures on flickr by his friends and colleagues, although no one can argue with the debate about "bean barriers" he started here (and the photo also appears on his credit card!). Having lived a year in Grenoble, France, he's a huge fan of cheese and is very proud that his are the first 4 results for Über Tartiflette on Google.

Team 8 - view and vote

Malcolm Eggs is the editor of The London Review of Breakfasts. He'd love to tell you more about himself but as with all of the LRB's contributors, his true identity remains a closely guarded secret. Needless to say, he likes breakfast and lives in London. He’d like to take this opportunity to point out to any hovering café proprietors that he has never made any kind of claim anywhere to be any kind of good cook whatsoever.

Mabel Syrup is also from The London Review of Breakfasts and is known for her exacting bagel standards and penchant for pancakes with her bacon. Much about her is classified but we can reveal that she works in WC1 and has strikingly similar breakfasting tastes to Malcolm.

Team 9 - view and vote

Eating food comes as naturally as breathing to Maz Hardey and Nicole Mathison, it really does.

Maz, who will be Nicole's Siouxsie Sioux Chef, particularly relishes sampling and reviewing food, while Nicole oft succumbs to her feeder tendencies by cooking excessive quantities of food for friends.

Both Maz & Nic subscribe to the Pippi Longstocking School of Cooking, because all food tastes much better if flipped in the air a few times during preparation - though they can't decide whether or not cartwheeling while cooking should be optional.

In rare moments not spent honing their food appreciation skills, each has a whole lotta love for connecting people+information through technology, plus more to spare for helping organise the London Girl Geek Dinners.

Team 10 - view and vote

Savannah Christensen, emigrated to the North West of England at 14 but is still a California girl at heart. She arrived in London with high hopes and a pet budgie in August 2004 and hasn't looked back. She has trained as a lawyer, played at publishing, set up a newspaper, helped launch a website, looked after sick animals, looked after sick people, slept in a plague pit, and met some truly incredible people along the way. She now spends her days (and nights) working on Kudocities.com. A community site, currently based in London, with the global ambition of making the world a more friendly and informed place - one city at a time. She is a terrible blogger. But not a terrible cook.

Jonny Russell is not web 2.0. Jonny can not even access Facebook at work. However, Jonny is like Saul on the road to Damascus and willing to be converted (so long as someone explains to him exactly what blogs are and why he should pay any attention to them). Jonny does however know food, and likes food, and is quite good at cooking it. Jonny fully understands Food 2.0.

Team 11 - view and vote

Ged Carroll is a digital strategies consultant with Waggener Edstrom Worldwide. Prior to Waggener Edstrom he worked in-house and agencyside for a number of brands including Yahoo!, Sony, Palm and Motorola. He also teaches courses in online PR on behalf of eConsultancy and blogs at renaissancechambara.jp. Ged holds a BA (Hons) degree in marketing and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (IPR). In his spare time Ged enjoys dj-ing and music production.

Liu Yumei is an artist, product and interior designer. Yumei was born in Chengdu in Sichuan province, People's Republic of China. She is currently studying at the University of the Arts London and is a graduate of the Beijing Central Academy of the Arts. Prior to studying in London she worked in Hong Kong and from a studio in Shenzhen. Yumei's work has been exhibited around Europe and Asia including Beijing. In her spare time Yumei enjoys watching contemporary dance going to the cinema and hiking.

Team 12 - view and vote

Bored with the day job, James Bridle channeled his love of cooking and booze into a book called, appropriately enough, Cooking with Booze (under the nom de plume George Harvey Bone). Now he writes about books and booze at shorttermmemoryloss.com all over the internet.

Ed Arthur's cooking career started at university with a tin of HP's All In One Breakfast and slowly improved as a matter of survival. Whilst not working for the family print company, Ed helps out with music video production, comes up with hare-brained schemes with James, and enjoys cooking for anyone that doesn't mind dinner served two hours later than planned.

Voting is Now Closed

Congratulations to the
Winners

 

Kitchen Host & Sponsor

__________________________

__________________________