It’s been a few weeks since my episode of Guy’s Grocery Games on the Food Network finally aired, and it was pretty surreal to see myself on national television, on such a large stage, doing what I absolutely love. It was a blast, regardless of outcome and I’m incredibly proud of the food I cooked. Not very often do you encounter a double yolked egg, but I did, with 3 straights eggs! The odds are 1:1,000,000,000 (Billon) and it was on television!
The experience was incredible, and it seems to be opening more doors for me in the culinary world. I’ve had tons of friends, old friends I haven’t talked to in years, and tons of strangers all reach out to share in my excitement and to ask me a bunch of questions. Having never been on GGG before, but being a somewhat avid fan, a lot of their questions are ones that I’ve had myself before participating in the show. So, I thought I would use this forum to answer some of the common questions for my followers, friends and fans. Ha, I actually have fans, I’m like Beiber!
And away we go…….
Is Guy nice in-person?
He is! Not only was he nice and kind, but he went out of his way to make us (homechefs) feel like we had won just by being selected to be on the show. He knew everything about each of us and did his homework reading our entire bios before coming to introduce himself. He knew my wife and sons name, he knew why I loved cooking, he asked me about what it was like cooking in a Jewish household and told me my Bubbie (grandmother) would have been proud. He was genuine and sincere. He does a ton of philanthropic work and it shows in his personality.
Is it a real grocery store?
Kind of. It’s literally an entire grocery store contained within a warehouse. It’s not a grocery store in the fact it’s not open to the public, but they have everything you’d find in your local grocery store. And I mean everything, and then some. And they have the best of anything you’re looking for. No off brand products or BigLots type goods, it’s literally Whole Foods or better on the quality. They also bring in the produce and meat/seafood fresh every morning. And at the end of the day, they donate anything fresh and unused to local food banks and charities. Such a cool process they have. They have workers who do nothing but make sure the shelves are stocked and the food is always fresh.
Do you know what the challenge is going to be before it happens?
No. You know absolutely nothing. It’s 3-2-1 GO, and then you run like a chicken with your head cut off, shopping while trying to figure out in your head what the hell you’re going to make.
Do you get more than 30 minutes?
Ok, so this one is debatable. You’re not supposed to get more than 30 minutes, and I can’t say for sure, and it might be because I was on a home cook episode, but if I had to bet on whether or not the clock paused to let a competitor finish, I would take that bet, I did however cook in the constraints of the time they gave, and I actually finished both dishes with a couple minutes to spare. They had me pretend I was finishing them off as the time expired.
They called you a “Miiddle Eastern Master”, do you only cook Middle Eastern food and why did you cook it exclusively on the show?
So, the premise of my episode was “Global Food Fanatics” which paired me against someone who specializes in French and another who does Filipino foods. While the 3 of us do those categories very well, we also cook everything else. We were told that we had to stay within our assigned wheelhouse. I was told I had to cook primarily Middle Eastern foods and not to stray too far from it. They said “Middle Eastern” could be used loosely and that encompasses a pretty large geographic region. Initially they wanted to cast me on a home cooks episode that would have had me cooking gluttonous and carb loaded dishes but I turned that down since that’s not what gets me super excited to cook in the kitchen. I held my ground and was happy to be cast to cook Middle Eastern food, while not exclusively what I cook, it is something my cooking is heavily influenced by.
How were you selected?
I was approached by The Food Network about a month before COVID hit, at the beginning of 2020, to do a new concept show they were working on involving home cooks. I was elated. They found me through the internet due to me winning the Arizona Home Top Chef back in 2016, some other food related PR and my Instagram. I was actually first contacted via Instagram by a casting director. After COVID because a thing, they shelved the idea of the show, but would reach out every few months with some other potential show ideas. Due to spikes in COVID those other shows kept getting shelved as well. They reached out about a month before I actually filmed with the idea of doing Guy’s Grocery Games, Home Cook edition. Turns out that earlier in 2021 they posted ads looking for homecooks to complete in GGG. I never sw those ads, however they ended up receiving over 90,000 applications. They reached out to me and asked me to be on the show without being part of that applicant pool. That’s probably the biggest honor that’s come from this whole process. The other cooks I completed with were incredibly talented and overall really nice people. We got to spend a lot of time together holed up in a hotel during our numerous COVID tests during the week. I however was asked to participate, just wow!
Would you do it again?
Yeah, without hesitation. The whole process was a bit of a cluster, but the payoff was worth the process. I would have cooked again while I was there if they asked. I’d do it again right this minute if they called, I’d be back at the GGG kitchen tomorrow!
What didn’t they show that you wish they would have?
So, I got beat up pretty badly for calling my shakshuka inspired Bolognese what I called it. It wasn’t a shakshuka, and it wasn’t a Bolognese, and I would agree with that. But it was a phenomenal dish. It would have won on taste alone, but that’s not the competition, there’s gameplay involved, and I lost because of what I called it. If I would have called it a ragu, maybe I would have won. But……they didn’t show why I cooked what I cooked. The challenge was the dreaded “small bag challenge”. I can’t stress enough just how small that bag was. It was smaller than gallon sized Ziploc, and all of my ingredients had to fit into it. While I was running around shopping I grabbed a jar of Harissa. When I normally buy harissa, it comes in a very small jar, but the only jar they had was rather large. Before I got back to my station, I looked in my bag and saw a giant jar of what I thought was tomato sauce, I’ve never seen a gigantic jar of harissa before so I assumed it was tomato sauce. Shame on me for thinking that, because it was not tomato sauce! With the challenge we were given, I could not go back for additional ingredients and had to use what I had. I could not use the harissa like tomato sauce because the dish would have been too spicy and inedible, so that’s kind of where I went wrong, and I salvaged what I could. I also only grabbed a small carton of 6 eggs rather than a carton of 12 because it was a small bag challenge and I knew I couldn’t fit much else if I grabbed a carton of 12. Little did I know that 3 of my eggs would have 2 yolks, and I wouldn’t be able to serve every judge 2 eggs or be able to remake them because I didn’t have enough eggs. While they showed the double yolks, which made for great TV, they didn’t show my interview on why I didn’t use tomato sauce. I’ve been asked about 100 times why I didn’t use tomato sauce, and that’s the reason why!
Was it hard?
It was hard, very very very very hard. What you see is what you get, you have 30 minutes, with no notice of the challenge, to go shop, cook and plate for the judges. You don’t know what you’re going to make before they say 3-2-1 GO. After doing the show, I have a newfound respect for anyone that can do that, with about 20 cameras in your face and a ton of people standing in you way while you cook.
All in all, it was an awesome experience and something I’d do again with a minutes notice. I’ve now had my 15 minutes of fame……..until the next time!
