Last week more than 1,000 members of our R&D team gathered in Menlo Park to participate in LinkedIn’s annual Chili Cook-Off. Our Oktoberfest celebration featured yodelers, lawn games, and a craft beer garden showcasing a number of local brewers. But this annual event is always about the chili.

This year, 18 teams formed weeks in advance and spent the days leading up to the event each preparing five gallons chili to be tasted and voted on by their colleagues. The teams came up with some amazingly creative entries, including ingredients such as homemade pretzel buns and ouzo. There was also a chaat style chili with an Indian spin. The competition was fierce, but there were a few truly outstanding chefs that should be recognized. The winning team, by popular vote was the widely popular Triple B chili made by Joey Addona, Matthew Turco, Laukik Watve. This team impressed the crowd with a combo of bacon, bison, and bourbon.

The other winning teams at the 2015 LinkedIn R&D Chili Cook-Off include:

• Popular Vote Vegetarian - The Bandit (Zhixiong Chen, Bohao Li, Eric Melz, Ryan Huang)
• Judges Pick (Joe Peterson) - Triple B (Joey Addona, Matthew Turco, Laukik Watve)
• Judges Pick (Chef Dale Ray) - Vegan Chaat Chili (Ram Vemuri, Neha Jain, Ben Silver)
• Judges Pick (Steve Johnson) - Mama Nithya’s Old Fashioned Chili (Nithya Selvaraj, Eric Abad, Steven Loi, Joe Lin, Grant Lin)

Whether attendees were there to eat or to compete, it was a great day to relax, spend time with colleagues, and make new connections.