BBQ sauce on cake? Modesto man’s unlikely flavors help win World Food Championship
It’s been eight years since a Modesto agricultural appraiser launched a barbecue sauce brand, and he can now add “World Food Champion” to his resume.
George Morasci has won several food competitions for his Five Monkeys BBQ Sauce and his cooking, but none on a stage as big as the most recent one. He and a small team won first place in one of 10 categories in an Indianapolis competition that gathered chefs and home cooks from around the globe.
How Morasci came to be in the World Food Championships is a competitor-turned-teammate tale.
Mike Johnson, a chef and restaurant owner from Missouri, and Morasci have competed in a number of events and have taken turns beating each other. In a competition Morasci wasn’t part of, Johnson won the “golden ticket” to the World Food Championships.
“I messaged him to congratulate him and he point-blank asked me, ‘Would you and your team want to join up with me so we can win this thing?’” Morasci said. “We had a conversation and decided that we would go ahead and do it and try to become world champions.”
Morasci’s friend from Washington, Andy Nguyen, often pairs with him for food competitions, so the team became three.
Setback in the first round teaches team that less is more
The trio competed in the live fire category of the competition, which means they could cook their food only over a wood or charcoal-fueled fire. No battery-operated, electronic or propane cooking devices were allowed.
The two classically trained chefs, Johnson and Nguyen, came up with the majority of the menu for both rounds of the event: the first with 23 contestants on Thursday, Oct. 16, and the second on Sunday, Oct. 19, with five finalists plus two wild-card teams.
For the first round, the trio had an Asian-influenced dish: wagyu ribeye steak with fire-roasted bone marrow butter, flambé pineapple chutney and bulgogi sauce, char siu and crab fried rice with a sunny-side-up quail egg, roasted lobster rangoon with citrus marmalade, and banana pudding cupcakes.
After Morasci practiced on his Weber grill at home, it was decided he would be in charge of cooking the cupcakes. The caramel atop the cupcakes was made with Five Monkeys Original BBQ Sauce.
Despite their creativity, Morasci said the team likely did too much in the first round and its dish may have overwhelmed the judges.
“We did not make the top five,” he said. “We were given a wild-card entry into the finals because of the way this dish looked.”
A focused menu secures comeback win
Narrowly escaping the first round, the team went back to its lodgings to start practicing the menu for the final round.
“We were confident that we could do better, so we decided to do a little bit less,” Morasci said. They tried again with a wagyu ribeye steak, this time with a bourbon peppercorn sauce.
Hard Truth Distilling Company was the sponsor of the live fire competition, and its rye whiskey was a required ingredient in the final round.
When Morasci was practicing making the sauce, he said it had a touch of bitterness when the whiskey cooked off. He added Five Monkeys Original to balance it.
“It was amazing,” he said. “You’d want to bathe in it.”
Side dishes were a crab cake with béarnaise sauce, charred Cesar salad (Morasci made the dressing and croutons) and twice-baked potatoes.
The dessert, a bourbon-soaked spice cake, was chosen 15 minutes before the round started when the team was presented with a mystery ingredient: whipped cream. The cake had a beef tallow buttercream and the Five Monkeys caramel sauce on it.
A touch of whipped cream was also incorporated in the bourbon peppercorn sauce for the steak and the béarnaise sauce for the crab cake.
“It was a team effort,” Morasci said. “Everyone trusted everyone.”
What’s next for the team?
Morasci, Johnson and Nguyen won the live fire category of the competition with a score of 99.125 out of 100, beating the previous two world champions, who came in second place with 98.75 points and third place with 92 points.
With the first place title came a prize of $10,000.
“(People) that you would see and know, they’re coming up and patting you on the back, shaking your hand, giving you a hug and high-fiving you ... anywhere from Super Bowl winners to Food Network chefs,” Morasci said. “I’m still not 100% sure that my feet have hit the ground yet.”
Over 400 teams competed in 10 categories, and the winner of each will move on to the Final Table hosted in Bentonville, Arkansas, next spring. The prize purse for that will be $150,000.
Until then, Morasci said he’s back to the daily grind.
“I always need to thank my family because they stay home so that I can go do these things,” he said. “(Five Monkeys is) still a family-run business. We ship and fill every order.”
Five Monkeys BBQ Sauce is sold at select Ace Hardware and Raley’s stores, Cost Less in Modesto, Village Fresh in Turlock and on Amazon.
This story was originally published November 12, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
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