Poplarville native, Whitney Miller, season one winner of Fox’s MasterChef and author of Modern Hospitality cookbook, was featured on opening night chef for Chefdance within the Sundance film festival in Park City, Utah, on January 18th.

Since winning Masterchef, Whitney has traveled throughout the United States and internationally, cooking at St. Regis hotels, speaking motivationally, writing magazine articles for magazines such as Southern Living and Clean Eating magazine, and conducting food demonstrations at events with other chefs including Food Network’s Guy Fieri and Cake Boss’s Buddy Valastro.

Chefdance, a five night 250 invite-only dinner party series, has featured chefs such as Food Network’s Tyler Florence and Donatella Arpaia and this year will include Top Chef contestant Richard Blais and Masterchef judge and Chicago chef Graham Elliott. The past attendees included Robert Redford, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Affleck, and Neil Young.

This will not only be Whitney’s first year to cook at Chefdance, but will also be the first year Chefdance has featured a Southern chef. Given this opportunity, Whitney wanted to showcase the best the South has to offer in cuisine. Her menu featured local Southern products: Beelicious Honey, Breadsmith Bakery, and Lil’ Butcher Shoppe of Hattiesburg, as well as Delta Grind cornmeal, New Orleans Leidenheimer French bread, Country Girl creamery of Lumberton, Mississippi shaped pottery from Etta B Pottery and copper trays from Copperworx of Clinton.

 Product sponsors also include California Olive Oil Ranch and Ergo Chef knives. Whitney was assisted at the Chefdance event by her sous chef, Loren Walker, Culinary Instructor at the Viking Cooking School in Greenwood, as well as Mary Miller and Leslie McKenzie.

For a complete menu and more information on the event, check out www.chefdance.com. For up-to-date pictures and info throughout the event, follow Whitney on Facebook, Whitney Miller -Masterchef, and twitter @whitneymillermc.