A culinary battle for the ages is set to go down at East Providence High School this Saturday evening.

But instead of winners and losers, all involved can feel good about the event, which raises money to support the year-round effort of Good Neighbors Community Kitchen and Food Pantry.

It is the third annual “All Fired Up!” cooking competition, which forms teams of volunteers from Good Neighbors and volunteers from the East Providence High School culinary program, and tasks them with creating the most scrumptious dish to be served to the some 280 guests attending the event.

According to Kate Mushipi, Executive Director of Good Neighbors, the event started off as a simple team-building exercise between the volunteers who prepared and served meals at the organization’s community kitchen; each of which thought they could out-cook the other.

“A light bulb went off at that time, because we were trying to figure out a new in-person fundraiser event,” Mushipi said. “Because we’re a little bit bigger than a pasta dinner situation, but not big enough to do a gala.”

Mushipi formulated the idea to include some East Providence students who had already been volunteering at Good Neighbors, and the cooking competition took flight. The first year they got 150 people to attend. The second year (last year) they filled the cafeteria to capacity at 280. The same held true this year, as tickets have been sold out for weeks already, with 20 students involved spread out over four competing teams.

The competition has turned into a chance for culinary students to showcase what they’ve learned and compete for something, which Mushipi said has added to the excitement of the evening.

“I started noticing the families of all the students come and they were bringing flowers for their student family member,” she said. “And I realized, oh my gosh, this is like the big band concert or the chorus concert or the big football game for the culinary students.”

Since the first event, Mushipi has been inviting the students to come volunteer more regularly at Good Neighbors, which she said has added to their understanding of the mission and their eagerness to be a part of the fundraiser.

“When they come here and they get to see a hunger relief organization working in their community, they're bought in,” she said. “Every year now they come here and they understand wthe impact that they're going to have by taking part in this. That’s important, I think.”

Although tickets are all sold out, you can still help the cause by bidding on an item in the online auction.