Between managing all eight Eat Good Group restaurants, Fish flew to New York in December to film after being in contact with the Food Network for about a year. Even he hasn't seen the episode yet, which airs at 5 pm on Tuesday, March 26.
Fish is sworn to secrecy and can't reveal who he competed against, what they cooked, or who won. But he was able to answer a few questions about why he wanted to be part of the show and how he hopes it will impact Spokane and Coeur d'Alene's food scene no matter what.
INLANDER: Was there something about Chopped that you really wanted to be a part of?
FISH: For me it was more about trying something I've never really done before. It's really skill based versus drama based. Like Hell's Kitchen, for instance, obviously you need to have some skills to be able to win that. But they're looking to have that drama — somebody messing up and Gordon calling him an idiot sandwich or something. I felt like, to delve into the TV world as a chef, I wanted something that was a little bit more focused on people's abilities. What's interesting, too, is you can be "chopped" for really anything. Everybody makes mistakes. You really have to be perfect, which is really hard to do.
You talked about delving into this TV world. What is the motivation for moving out of the kitchen and onto the screen?
It's trying to consistently grow my career. I've been able to accomplish a lot, and a lot of that is due to the people around me and our chef community in Spokane. So I've gotten to this point where it's like, 'Ok, well, I'm already doing like multiple restaurants. What else can I do?' I'm always eager to learn and grow and do something bigger.
Was there anything that you were particularly nervous about going into the episode?
A lot of it is just the fear of the unknown. I've done competition style cooking before within our local community. But literally having no idea what the secret ingredients were gonna be — there will be one ingredient in there that's weird, that would work with like some of them but not all of them, whether you're going a sweet or savory route. So, trying to figure out how to tie all that in, that was the hardest thing for me. And on top of that, not really knowing who your competition is. So you're sizing everybody up when you first meet and just trying to get a feel for everybody.
Without breaking contract, what can people expect from the episode on Tuesday?
They're gonna see me and all the other contestants really putting their best foot forward — everybody doing their best to showcase where they're from. For me, I know there are other chefs in the area that have been on Food Network shows and I just wanna add to our culinary community. Spokane is a place to get good food. Spokane is becoming a food destination. If just being on Chopped once helps bring more awareness to our community, then I feel pretty good about that.
