Cohen, executive chef for the Willow Street Wood-Fired Pizza restaurant chain, has returned from Sin City, where he competed in the International Pizza Expo's Italian Chef Wars and took home top honors. This time, what happens in Vegas isn't staying in Vegas--word of Cohen's victory is spreading, and Willow Street couldn't be happier.

Two industry magazines, Pizza Today from the U.S. and Canadian Pizza, sponsored the Chef Wars. Cohen and Willow Street Pizza had been the subjects of a feature article in Pizza Today back in October 2003.

"That kind of got me on the radar," says Cohen. "That started my relationship with the magazine."

Cohen says that, after the feature story was published, he continued to send the magazine recipes from time to time.

Apparently it paid off--when it came time for Pizza Today to pick its representative for the 2005 Italian Chef Wars, Cohen got the call. Magazine personnel told him they had been enjoying the recipes he had been sending, and asked him if he would be interested in a free trip to Vegas--including airfare, hotel accommodations and free admission to the International Pizza Expo--to compete in the event.

Naturally, he couldn't turn down an offer like that.

Cohen was given some initial information and time to prepare for the competition. He says he was given a list of 34 ingredients and was told to make up to five different dishes with them. In addition to the approved ingredients, he would be allowed to use up to five secret ingredients of his own choosing.

Cohen says the task was no easy feat. The list did not include many ingredients he feels are essential to Italian cooking, such as onions, vinegar and mustard.

"Everybody cooks with onions!" he says. "So I ended up taking onions as one of my secret ingredients."

The other four ingredients Cohen brought were pippin apples, polenta, broccoli rabe and Gorgonzola cheese.

Cohen says he is incredibly grateful to Sur La Table cooking store in Los Gatos--they lent him a quiet kitchen where he could concentrate on designing his dishes for the competition and practice cooking them quickly and efficiently.

"I had to get really creative with what I was going to create," he says.

The International Pizza Expo took place from March 29 to April 1. Cohen says it was exciting to see how truly international the event was--he frequently bumped into pizza industry folks from Sweden, Germany and even Egypt.

He says another aspect that made the trip fun was when the ownership of Willow Street Pizza sent a number of staff members to accompany him.

"We used it as a great team-building experience. We went out to dinner two nights on the trip, and got to hang out outside of work, which is always nice," he says. "Plus I had my cheering squad; I packed the stands with my supporters."

The extra support proved to be more valuable than he could have imagined. Cohen says the competition was nerve-wracking, as the competing chefs--Cohen and Diana Coutu, owner of Diana's Gourmet Pizza Chain in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada--were given only 90 minutes to cook all the dishes they had designed.

"I definitely was sweating it a little bit," he says of the competition. "It was the time constraint more than anything. Cooking at home, if something goes wrong, you can recover--that's harder when you have a time limit and a limited number of ingredients."

He says a few hundred people were in the audience, and the judges were three Las Vegas chefs, including one from the local Cordon Bleu, and two Canadian pizzeria owners.

Cohen ended up creating two different pizzas, a salad, an appetizer and a dessert with his ingredients--and apparently they pleased the judges, because Cohen walked away victorious.

"I was proud to be selected, whether I won or lost," he says. "To be selected out of that pool was very flattering."

In his free time while in Vegas, Cohen says he also enjoyed exploring the International Pizza Expo, which held seminars in many areas of the industry such as marketing, cost control and customer relations, to name a few. He also got to check out products such as new cheeses and dough machines.

"It was a great opportunity to meet new people and network in the industry," he says.

Cohen says he has been working as executive chef of Willow Street Pizza's three locations--downtown Los Gatos, the Westgate shopping center near Saratoga and downtown Willow Glen--for three years, and has aspirations of making partner someday. He began his culinary career at the young age of 13 as a baker and sandwich maker in his hometown of Philadelphia.

A follow-up article in Pizza Today on Cohen's win at the Italian Chef Wars is due out next month, and Cohen says Willow Street Pizza is planning special events to allow the community to come and taste the dishes he designed for the competition. In addition, the two pizzas he created will be featured menu items throughout the month of May.

It seems that Cohen truly did win a Vegas jackpot--just a different flavor.

For more information on the International Pizza Expo and Italian Chef Wars, visit www.pizzaexpo.com. Visit Willow Street Wood-Fired Pizza at www.willowstreet.com.