Holly Smith has faced some tough judges, but on Wednesday Tuesday evening she met her pickiest one yet: a boy from Toledo, Ohio, named Austin.

“He spit all but two dishes out,” laughed the chef and owner of Cafe Juanita during a Wednesday morning phone call.

Smith is referring to the meal she and a handful of chefs made for the Great American Family Dinner Challenge in Washington, DC. The affair was part of the first-ever Building a Healthier Future summit, a two-day forum put on by the Partnership for a Healthier America.

The cook-off was one of several marquee events (Michelle Obama’s speech probably takes the title of headliner—even chefs can’t trump the First Lady), and had Smith and Ming Tsai facing off against Tom Colicchio and Seattle’s Maria Hines (Tilth, Golden Beetle). The four James Beard winners were tasked with making a meal in 30 minutes with only $10, the idea being to demonstrate how to cook healthy with a food-stamp budget.

It went down in the Regency Ballroom. There, side-by-side kitchens—“pretty straightforward kitchens,” noted Smith (the gig was meant to simulate real life, remember)—faced a crowd of 800. That’s the most people Smith has cooked before. Nerve-wracking? Nah. “I don’t care about a stage. It wasn’t about the judges. It was about the 800 people watching” and the conversations they were having.

Those judges included Austin and his single mother and another family from Maryland. They all weighed in on the two teams’ creations but it was the budding boy gourmand “who really took over.” A kid spitting up food and making gaggy faces is a good barometer of what is and isn’t working.

Smith made quinoa with veggies and herbs and quick-braised chicken thighs; her partner Tsai a salad and parfait dessert. Ultimately it was a Jello creation crafted by Colicchio that won over Austin, giving Colicchio and Hines a nine-point edge over their competitors.

“But he did eat three bites of my chicken,” beamed Smith.