Bacon Donuts, Flying!

© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE

Waking up this morning, I can’t tell you how relieved I was to have the first show under my belt.

The build up over the last few weeks has been one thing, but yesterday was entirely nerve wracking. My phone ringing off the hook and my email exploding with well wishes from friends and family members and it seems, every person I’ve crossed paths with over the course of my life. And amidst all of this anticipation, work was super busy. We were cooking for an event, the food came out well and we were on schedule…until I got a call from my driver, Juan, to tell me that the clutch in our van was out. Of course! Luckily he was only a block away and we were able to get another van, transfer the food, and still send him on his way in a moderately timely fashion, but a close call to be sure.

Watching the show last night was totally wild, to put it lightly. It’s still hard to believe that the experience I had in Las Vegas is at all related to the neatly packaged television show that debuted last night. The experience of it all was so emotional while we were living it. But with the buffer of the screen, it now seems so separate from being there and in many ways it is. The show you saw last night is such a small fraction of the whole, that the product hardly resembles what I remember feeling.

The first few days were stressful, as all the days after that were stressful. But in the beginning, the whole experience was so new and unfamiliar, and the stress was indistinguishable from the culture shock I was also experiencing. Have I mentioned to you yet that I don’t much care for Vegas?

We arrived in Vegas, swung by our house and were shuttled off to the studio. I probably should have suspected that the intensity was on from the get-go. But I asked if we were going to cook, since I was wearing flip flops, and everyone said no. Repeatedly, they told me, no, no, you’ll be fine. We arrived on set, saw the Top Chef Kitchen for the first time and moments later, Padma is introducing our first quickfire challenge. Guess who’s still sporting flip flops?

I felt like an idiot. The producers found someone on set who wore the same shoe size as I do and she let me borrow her shoes, but I didn’t have socks. I was not about to throw my bare feet into some stranger’s shoes without socks, so someone was sent to buy socks. The whole issue held up filming and I overheard one of the cast members muttering about how unprofessional I must be to show up in flip flops. I wanted to bury my head in all that sand. First of all, I’m an old school sort of chef that still cooks every day in chef pants not jeans, in clogs not Converse and with my hair pulled back, not fixed or spiked. I would never dream of cooking in flip flops. It was my first dose of Bravo’s charm.

This off screen issue, combined with my team’s fourth place finish in the relay had me feel as though I was off to a bad start, not to mention team mate Jen’s bleeding all over the place. Surely a bad omen, I thought. But before I had a chance to internalize this, we were presented with the vice challenge and shuttled off to Whole Foods to shop. I hardly had time to contemplate what to make before I had to know what to buy, and I spent that entire night worrying about my decision to do donuts.

The next morning I awoke feeling a renewed confidence in the dish and headed to Cut, Wolfgang’s restaurant, feeling good. I knew I probably wouldn’t win with donuts, but I also thought donuts would stand out. I felt pretty certain I was safe and wasn’t getting sent home. I didn’t know until seeing the show last night that my donuts were flying through the dining room!

Really, though, who throws donuts? How old is he again? I still stand by that dish. They asked me for my vices and I presented them on a plate: bacon, donuts, Rodenbach Grande Cru and chocolate. I’ll admit that maybe it wasn’t a top chef plate, but I definitely met the challenge and with a little whimsy to boot. They did like my sauces, I’ll have you recall.

In this first episode, they showed surprisingly little of me, and that’s okay. I may be too normal for highly rated TV. I don’t have a loud mouth or a million tattoos or a faux hawk. I like to cook and to be in the kitchen and to explore new foods and techniques. I just prefer to do these things on my own time and not under the pressure of a 30-minute challenge.

I didn’t get eliminated in the first episode. And I didn’t die watching myself either. Not too bad for a premiere, I’d say.