Deb Pellegrino

Deb Pellegrino, executive pastry chef at Harrah's and Showboat Atlantic City, has garnered national recognition for her creative confections after winning Food Network Challenge: Chocolate Myths in July 2011, where she competed against three other top chefs in the country and won with a chocolate model of the Kraken—a monstrous ship-eating octopus.

Pellegrino is a confectionery artist equipped with the culinary skills to transform chocolate into just about anything—even fashion. In November 2011, Pellegrino was invited to design edible Broadway-inspired haute couture for a fashion show at the 14th annual New York City Chocolate Show. The design was 68 percent dark chocolate and based on the character Scar from Disney’s The Lion King.

Pellegrino began her career in 1992, when she graduated from the Academy of Culinary Arts and landed a crew chef job on a luxurious yacht and traveled the globe for three years. She visited places from the Tahitian islands and the Galapagos to the U.S. West Coast, Bermuda and the Caribbean to Scotland, Norway, Russia and more. She traded T-shirts for black pearls, caught her own fish to clean and serve for dinner, and bought shrimp fresh from a trawler that crossed paths with her vessel.