In the spirit of the “restaurant wars” challenge on the hit TV show Top Chef, eighth grade students in Michelle Langwieder’s French 1B class created four restaurants vying for the best reviews from Beaver’s “celebrity” judges.

Ms. Langwieder describes the project:

My French 1B class has been busy at work creating their recipe projects, the final product of which has traditionally been a big feast and a class cookbook.  This year we added a little twist.  We have created four restaurants within the class.  The students selected the best food pairings and created restaurants and menus. Students visited the different restaurants within the class to taste each other’s traditional family recipes and learn a little more about our cultures and histories.

Middle school PE teacher Jeff Anderson, MS history teacher Michael Adamowicz, and other guests evaluated each restaurant including the food’s nutritional value. Unlike Top Chef, there were no harsh words by the judges as everyone enjoyed the dishes.

You can view a slide show of pictures from the event in the Flickr gallery.