There are a lot of ways to impress Guy Fieri (with an epic burger, with a waffle bigger than his head, with a sandwich that takes you immediately to Flavor Town) but none are as impressive as winning his cooking show. Tracy Shepos Cenami would know — she's done it twice.
Shepos Cenami was the final one standing at the end of Guy's Grocery Games' Cheesy Special, then went on to beat out the competition in an all-star battle, the first-ever Supermarket Masters challenge. Here, she's spilling everything about her experience: how she prepared, what the judges were like, and just how handy Fieri can be in the kitchen.
The casting process is surprisingly streamlined.
Shepos Cenami is a chef at Sonoma County's La Crema Winery and a certified cheesemaker, so when producers set out to cast contestants for Guy's Grocery Games' cheese special, they reached out to her. There was still an application process, but it didn't include any of the gimmicks you'd expect from someone like Fieri. There was no portion where you had to come up with a signature catchphrase and no test challenge in which you had to bleach your tips with common grocery items. Instead, Shepos Cenami completed a Skype interview and submitted photos of her family and her most impressive dishes.
There's no way to prepare.
Before her first appearance on the show, Shepos Cenami had no idea what to expect and, in turn, no way to prepare, so she relied on a philosophy rather than a strategy: "I wanted to be very clearly representative of myself and not do anything I wouldn't normally do," she explains. That meant not using the show as a forum to try something new, but instead to show what she normally liked to cook.
One episode takes more than 12 hours to film.
And most of it's not even spent cooking. Chefs have 30 minutes to shop for, prepare, and plate each dish. With three challenges, that only adds up to an hour and a half. The rest of the time, you're being judged or pouring your heart out to the camera. "After you compete, you sit down and do interviews, which can last two or three hours," Shepos Cenami shares.
The judges will always find something to critique.
"There's no way any chef, in half an hour, under those circumstances, can have a perfect dish," Shepos Cenami says. As such, it leaves room for the judges to scrutinize what you've made. And even if the challenges sound silly, the competing chefs take them seriously. "You're still cooking from the heart — still coming up with an idea and creating it," Shepos Cenami explains.
One of the stations is worse than all the others.
There's one setup that's closest to the judges, and it's the one you never want to be assigned to, Shepos Cenami reveals. "They're watching you the entire time, so they see everything you're doing," she says. "If you're next to them, you can hear them chatting while you're cooking, which can be difficult."
Fieri gives the best pep talks.
Even if you've never met him, a word you might use to describe Fieri is "funny" — whether he means to be or not. But Shepos Cenami insists he's something else, too: lovely. "Before the show, Guy gathered the contestants to remind us we're there to have fun and to show the world who we are as chefs," she says. And even though it's his show, Fieri doesn't hog the spotlight, according to Shepos Cenami, who added that he's very supportive and encourages each chef to use the show as their own platform.
He also makes a great sous chef.
When he was nearby, Shepos Cenami called on Fieri for the most hilarious tasks. "His role, if you take advantage of it, is to help you in certain ways," she says. Contestants would ask him to grab them an ingredient, but Shepos Cenami just used his brute strength: "I think I asked him to open up a jar!" she recalls.
You become a local celebrity after winning.
Along with a $20,000 check and a trophy (Shepos Cenami's son loves to look at it) comes a little bit of fame. It's a great story for Shepos Cenami to tell restaurant guests, but it's even better when a complete stranger makes the connection. "I was walking down the street, and a car rolled down its window and yelled out a congrats to me for winning the show," she remembers. "Someone I didn't even know!"
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