eatsnow

I wrote this piece right after Chopped aired. It'll give you a better (and more amusing) break down of my thoughts on the day: https://medium.com/@brookesiem/what-its-like-to-compete-on-and-win-food-network-s-chopped-760bf1779420

But the TL;DR of it is that my day was ~15 hours. Call time was ~5am and I was home around 11pm. The winner has the longest day because all the talking head segments are filmed after each contestant is done filming. You have to go over the whole day, in the present tense like you're narrating what happened. So if you just got chopped, you still have to sit there and re-live whatever you just screwed up. And the longer you're on the show, the more footage there is to go over, so the longer the interview is.

Judging takes a looong time. I'd say each contestant had about a half hour of critique per dish, which means the judging for the appetizer round alone took two hours. They had us sit and take breaks, which was welcome because I remember my back was really bothering me that day.

I don't remember them warning us about particular machines, but I do know that there is a cursed bowl somewhere on set. Apparently anyone who uses the bowl always gets chopped. And so does anyone with a fedora.

All in all, it was the single most emotional day of my life. And I don't say that lightly. I've had my fair share of awful shit in this world, but Chopped is a particular beast. You expect to be exhausted, under time pressure, nervous, etc. What you can't account for is the intangibles like being worried about your personal and professional reputation, how the show will be edited, and the fact that you're mic'd and on camera for 10 hours straight. And you forget that the Chopped people know all about you because you've been interviewed multiple times over months before you get to the actual show. So when you screw up, and you're sure you've just embarrassed the hell out of yourself on national TV, that's when the producer chooses to say, "how do you think your dead dad would feel about this?" And then you cry. And then you think you're going to get chopped. And then you don't. But you have to do it again. And the sound guy heard you pee. And then you get yelled at for making shitty food. And then you win $10000.

It's a weird weird day.

More often than I'd like to admit. It's a fun party trick. My friends get a kick out of inviting me over, giving me a something, and then letting me ransack their kitchens for the rest of the ingredients.

There's a few minutes of lag time that is officially called, "chefs staring at food." You have to take the ingredients out and line them up in front of the basket so the cameras can get the shot. When each camera has a shot of each chef staring at the food, you get the okay to go and the clock starts. This takes a minute, maybe two. But I found it to be key, because it allowed me to think through a scrappy plan.

Yelp can die in a fire along with any other review site that can make or break a business based on the opinion of entitled assholes with a complaining problem and twitchy thumbs. But then again, that's the internet in a nutshell.

As far as the company goes...let's just say I hung up on a lot of representatives over the years.

Do they know I'm 94?