Food Network Star

by Ian Jackman

  Once again, Emeril made the big reveal. “The people’s choice: Guy Fieri.”

  “Knowing Guy outside of TV, he’s still that same cool dude. He’s got his arm round your shoulder talking about a sports team. He’s been able to take his very gregarious personality and take it into a restaurant and talk to someone about the food they make. He’s made that transition very smoothly. Guy just makes you want to watch whatever it is he’s doing. Whatever he’s doing is the coolest thing to be doing because it’s Guy doing it.”

  —Duff Goldman

  “The birth of my sons, that’s the top. This is right up there.”

  —Guy Fieri

  SEASON TWO ELIMINATIONS

  EPISODE TWO

  First Elimination ∗ JESS DANG: “I honestly don’t think you can have a very full-time job and be a great chef. You can be a great home cook, but you’ll never be able to compete with all the passionate chefs who’ve made a commitment to the craft. I’ll continue to just cook on the side and throw great dinner parties, and that’s enough for me right now.”

  EPISODE THREE

  Second Elimination ∗ BETH RAYNOR: “[As a chef at Saffron Lane in San Francisco] I’ve developed a concept around the kind of food I know and love and want to share with a much larger audience. My formula is based on keeping things healthy yet incredibly flavorful, simple yet elevated, and as organic and seasonal as possible. So far, so good!”

  EPISODE FOUR

  Third Elimination ∗ EVETTE RODRIGUEZ: “I feel very strongly that one not need have a culinary degree to work in the industry. What is truly needed is to have a strong work ethic. The rest: genius, or otherwise, will come. A thirst for knowledge will ensure you are constantly learning and you must cook all of the time!”

  EPISODE FIVE

  Fourth Elimination ∗ ANDY SCHUMACHER: “I felt like I was doing good in the competition, I had a good shot . . . a chance to do something I would never do otherwise in my life. It was fun. When I see my family I’m going to give them hugs and kisses.”

  EPISODE SIX

  Fifth Elimination ∗ NATHAN LYON: “The competition taught me how to think on my toes under the most difficult of conditions. Thankfully, on my cooking shows [see chefnathanlyon.com], even though I may cook eighteen half-hour cooking episodes in nine consecutive days, or even twenty-five cooking episodes in five consecutive days (no joke), I always know ahead of time which of my recipes I’ll be cooking, and under what conditions I’ll be preparing them. On Next Food Network Star, we never knew anything, ever.”

  EPISODE SEVEN

  Sixth Elimination ∗ CARISSA SEWARD: “The entire process was really challenging both mentally and physically. I think once you get it, the process gets a lot easier and you’re more able to be yourself, to relax and enjoy what is happening to you and around you and take it all in and appreciate the experience. It was tough, but nothing worthwhile comes without a lot of hard work and effort so I didn’t mind.”

  Runner-up ∗ REGGIE SOUTHERLAND: “People have been incredible, stopping me on the street, stopping their cars while I’m walking the dog. It’s been great. . . . I learned so much from so many people.”

  Guy Fieri: A Q&A

  “It’s all about the food for me. I woke up this morning and the first thing I said to my wife was, ‘Good morning,’ and the second was, ‘What do you want for dinner?’ ”

  When did you think you could win Next Food Network Star?

  I figured out I had a shot to win when Emeril announced that I had won. There was never a time I looked at it and said, “I’m winning.” I’m an optimistic person but one of the reasons I might have won was that I didn’t go in there having to win. I was very successful in my restaurants and in my life and didn’t feel that I had to have this. I don’t think I put as much pressure on myself as others did.

  So you really felt in danger at certain points?

  Every time we went to elimination I went, “Oh boy. Here comes me getting kicked off.” Every time it didn’t happen I thought, “Well, now the competition’s even more difficult, I got to really prepare myself.” The competitors were all great chefs, really worked hard, all really wanted it and most of them could have been really successful. I thought I was going to lose a few times. I was packing my stuff.

  You weren’t confident even in the final two?

  I was very grounded with the idea that if Reggie won, I would be very happy. Reggie is a great guy. Again, I was more at ease knowing that whatever happened, I still had a great life to go back to.

  So who did you see as your biggest threat?

  They were all a threat. The first night they all talked about their accreditations and going to culinary school and I’m sitting there thinking, “I’m just a guy that cooks.” I didn’t have any classical training. But I didn’t really look at them as my competition. The only one who was going to beat Guy Fieri was Guy Fieri. That the only way that I was going to lose was if I couldn’t answer the call.

  With your wife Lori being pregnant, is it true you almost didn’t participate at all?

  I did everything I could to not compete. I really didn’t want to go on a reality show. I didn’t want to go in front of the country and get my ass kicked. But I’ve always encouraged my friends and everyone around me to live their limits. It was time I walked the talk. I had a good out with Lori being pregnant but she said, “You absolutely have got to do this. You can’t keep talking about it.” A lot of the right things aligned at the right time to make it happen.

  You knew from a young age that you wanted to work with food?

  I was always a junkie about food, always really appreciated it. I ran a pretzel cart when I was a kid, that was the beginning. Going to France when I was sixteen was another really influential piece. It’s just something that you either have or you don’t and I’ve been bitten by the bug.

  Did you used to watch the Food Network before you were on it?

  I used to watch the original Iron Chef because I enjoyed the eclectic food styles and the different types of prep but that was about it. I never really watched because that’s what I do for a living. I knew Emeril’s name and I knew Mario Batali and Bobby Flay but I never knew a lot about them. I respected that they were able to be restaurateurs and also do shows, the whole deal.

  What about Next Food Network Star?

  I had never seen the show. I had no idea what I was doing.

  From the very first demo, you seemed very comfortable on the air.

  Coming from where I have, you have to roll with the punches. My dad did a lot of critical thinking exercises with me when I was a kid. He would put four items on the counter and say. “Make something with that.” He was just seeing what my imagination would come up with. And in the restaurant business, do you know how many times I’ve gone to a catering event and we’re serving something that involves tortillas and there are no tortillas? You figure out pretty quickly what the dish is going to be. You learn to adapt. You can’t lose it because everybody’s counting on you.

  And you can’t lose it on TV either . . .

  I was doing a satellite media tour the other day in New York and here I am on a big station and the burners aren’t working and they’re making a beeping sound. In the middle of my demo: “beep, beep, beep . . .” Plus the food is not getting hot because the burner isn’t working. But I can’t look at the camera and say, “Excuse me guys. . . .” You just roll with it. So I was talking for four and a half minutes with the “beep, beep, beep.” I was losing my mind when we finished.

  Your POV was “Off the hook and out of bounds.” Did you always cook like that?

  That’s not really just my cooking technique, it’s my lifestyle. I live life to the fullest. Anything that we can think of we try to do. My family, we dirt bike, we snowboard, we travel. . . . It’s the same way with food. Food is unconquerable. It’s a gigantic mountain to climb and I look at it as a great journey. There’s no structure to it and no rules.

  You said if you got a sho
w it would be a cross between Emeril, Jackass, and American Chopper . . .

  That’s exactly what it is. That wasn’t a prediction, it was just how I was seeing my life. I have a bunch of crazy friends, I’ve got a big family, we take on enormous projects, things way above and beyond what we should be doing.

  Such as . . .

  Right now we are building a 25-foot, 10,000- pound pizza trailer. My wife and dad and I were sitting around and he said what in the hell are we doing with this? I said, “Every now and again, I want to have my pizza trailer ready to go,” and he said, “You don’t have a pizza trailer,” and I said, “Exactly. That’s why I need one.” This is a wood-fired pizza oven—it’s a 4000-pound pizza oven from Italy that’s going on a trailer. This is badass.

  Did you have to hold back on the show?

  I had to hold back. They already weren’t understanding me. When Bob Tuschman asked me about my culinary POV and I said “Off the hook,” he didn’t get it. What you are seeing now is what you would have got then if I had let it all out but I held it back. They would just have thought I was full of it!

  What’s it like being a judge on Next Food Network Star?

  It’s incredibly difficult. I’m not a food critic. When I started doing Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, that was one of the things I had to make real clear. I’m not going to critique people’s stuff. I’ll find the good in anybody, not because I’m afraid I’ll call it like it is because I’ll do that if I see a friend out of balance but that other side of it is not really my game.

  But you have called people out for some bad dishes.

  Here’s the way I look at food: Is the product being used in the right way? Was it cooked in the right way? Past that, people have different appreciations. If it doesn’t agree with me I’ll say it. I don’t like licorice and tuna fish; chocolate sauce and halibut doesn’t do it for me. But as long as they have a premise and a perspective and a reason they are coming from, I’ll listen. Someone burning something or taking sushi-grade ahi and cooking it I’ll criticize but you can’t beat a guy up for trying.

  And there’s the show-biz, like the red carpet you judged finalists on in Season Six.

  People see the tattoos and the hair and the bling and they ask if I got that after I became the Food Network guy and I say no, I was living this way before that. You have to be comfortable with who you are and how you present yourself. Some people push too hard and think they have to be too over the top. Other people regress and don’t give anything and neither is the right way to go. Just be who you are. You might have to dial it back a little bit or you might have to come out of your shell a little bit and that’s for people to come to learn.

  Does being on TV come naturally to some people?

  I think it comes natural to some people but if it doesn’t you need to figure out how to make it be natural. Some people are scared to death to walk the red carpet and others make it a big party. However you do it, you have to make it through the red carpet. If it’s not in your wheelhouse you need to develop it.

  What’s your best advice for someone going on a show like this?

  Don’t sweat the small stuff. It is the little things that create the chain reactions that are going to sink the ship. Stuff is going to happen. It’s going to happen on TV, it’s going to happen with a recipe, at a demo, with your career even. All these situations, just handle it and move on. Don’t let it derail you and don’t let it capture your energy.

  Were you concerned the look wasn’t going to work for Food Network?

  I looked at the people that they had on and I thought, “Well, they’re not shy about characters.” Emeril was the Elvis of food. But I didn’t know if mine was going to be acceptable. I’m surprised with how it has gone.

  You’re surprised at your success?

  I did not think it was going to go like this. When I won, my business partner asked me who was going to cover the operations of the company and I said, “Me! I have to go and shoot this six episodes and I’ll be back in two weeks.” And he said, “No, after that.” And I said, “What do you mean after that? Dude, I’m going to be back. No big deal.” And he said, “You don’t understand. This is going to happen.” “They don’t need me,” I said. That was the ongoing joke.

  You’ve stepped into network TV with Minute to Win It. Will you always come back to the food?

  Food will always be the center of what I’m doing. We wrapped the end of Minute to Win It and for the wrap party I had a couple of my sous-chefs come down to L.A. and we cooked for the cast and the crew. That’s what it’s always about. My greatest relaxation is to cook and to hang out and cook and then cook some more.

  Do you pinch yourself sometimes?

  I’m not claiming to be the greatest chef in the world by any stretch of the imagination, and I’m honored to be around anybody that has one badass recipe. And I sit there with Emeril and with Mario, two of the guys that I highly respect, and listen to them talk about different foods I never really had that much depth with, I just go, “You gotta be kidding me!”

  You’re still involved with your restaurants?

  I still work all the menus. I was just there today meeting with my directors. There is still a tremendous amount to do to make it happen with the restaurants. It’s my first love and I will go back to it.

  What is the best food town in America?

  New York. Why? New York has the greatest population in a small area. It’s the most diverse food town but it can be difficult to comprehend it all. There are so many great food towns. Minneapolis is a great food town. Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles. And Phoenix. Denver. San Antonio. Austin. The best thing to say is that it’s a great food country.

  “My wife asks where will we be when it all ends and I say, ‘Probably with a little ten-seat restaurant that I open when I want and I’m cooking what I am cooking.’ ”

  Season THREE

  Season Three opened with a new look—from inside the carriage house in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, where the eleven finalists would live. Not only were they competing for their own show, but the pot was sweetened with another grand prize—a new Mercury Mariner. With each successive season, challenges have been made harder and more complex. Season Three would open with one of the most chaotic and least well-executed elimination challenges of all.

  THE FINALISTS

  1. Colombe Jacobsen. Colombe received her formal training at the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York and has worked as a yoga and fitness instructor. She was interested in fresh, healthy, local food that’s not complicated—and in hosting her own organic-cooking show.

  2. Vivien Cunha. Vivien was born in Brazil but had lived ten years in Los Angeles, where she ran a catering business and taught cooking. Her POV: ethnic food, with a Brazilian twist.

  3. Michael Salmon. Salmon (“like the fish”) worked as a food-service manager in two New York establishments, one a restaurant, the other a food market. “I’ve got some of the strongest culinary experience out there,” said Michael.

  4. Tommy Grella. Tommy, a financial planner, had no formal culinary training but a great deal of experience at home grilling with friends and family. “I think I can bring a new way of thinking to the Food Network,” said Tommy. “Going over the top and having a great time. . . . ‘Grellacize’—that’s what I’m all about.”

  5. Amy Finley. Amy trained in Paris at the École Supérieure de Cuisine Française, and was now a stay-at-home mom. Her food was grounded in what she learned in France, and her early POV—“Bringing Paris into People’s Kitchens”—morphed into “the Gourmet Next Door” over the course of the series.

  6. Paul McCullough. Paul described himself as a caterer to celebrities, or people who think they are. He had always wanted to be a star, so a Food Network show would change his life. He turned his “Simply Fabulous Party Food” POV into “Party Food on a Budget.” “I struggled and felt a little lost, so when I finally came up with ‘Party Food on a Budget,’ it was a relief. It should
have been a no-brainer, since catering parties and making budgets work for clients is what I do. I wish I would have had that revelation sooner. It could have helped me focus my demos.”

  7. Rory Schepisi. Rory left high school to attend the Culinary Institute of America. In Vega, Texas, she was building a restaurant. “I’m like a scientist in the kitchen, always experimenting and creating new recipes. . . . That’s what makes cooking fun!” said Rory. “I make real food for real people. I’m all about blue-collar cooking—turn your backyard into a bistro,” hence “Backyard Bistro.”

  8. Nikki Shaw. Nikki catered weddings, parties, and funerals, all with a hip approach. “I just like to keep it funky and trendy,” said Nikki. “I am a little spicy and a little sweet,” Nikki said of her food.

  9. Joshua Adam Garcia (“Jag”). Known as Jag for his initials, the ex-Marine was working as a chef de cuisine. “I got a passion for food that’s unreal,” said Jag. His aim: to “Jag it up” and to be one of the first chefs on television to represent Latino Caribe cooking.

  10. Adrien Sharp. Adrien hosted a local TV cooking show. He left a job he’d had for seven years at a uniform-rental service to come to New York to compete because he couldn’t turn down the opportunity. “My wife, Angie, was very supportive and excited, and that’s all that mattered. I’ll never forget her reaction when we received that first call from Food Network. Priceless.” Adrien wanted to show people that comfort food can be healthy.