Alexis Hernandez

Conversation with a chef: Hi, Alexis. Maybe you could set the scene a little bit for where you are?

Alexis Hernandez: I’m in Tampa, Florida. 

Beautiful. When I was little, our family went to the States and went to Tampa. 

Tampa’s beautiful right now, because the summer is gone, and right now we’re heading into our fall, and so the temperatures are like 80 during the day, and maybe 70 in the evening. So you get to have a little bit of how they say here, ‘sweater weather’. You pull out your sweater just, for the couple of moments while you’re sitting outside on the patio.

I remember that too, being in the States and coming from New Zealand, we were so surprised because for us it was still really warm and these people had their jumpers on. How are you? 

I’m doing very good. I just got back from watering. I have a garden here. It’s a 20 by 40 plot in a community garden. I love fresh flowers, and so I have my plots of flowers, and my bell peppers are coming in, and I planted all my vegetables, my carrots. 

Congratulations on your second book. That’s really exciting. Did it come out in October? 

October 7th. I worked on it for about a year and a half. I was going to write another cookbook, and it was going to be a Latino, Cuban, something. I wasn’t sure, and I was going to put a lot of the recipes that my publisher from the last book said to take out. And, as a chef, I love taking feedback. I don’t get offended. I thought, they probably know better than me. When I sat down to write my second book, I realised that a lot of the stories behind the recipes were becoming much longer than I’d intended. Usually, you have a little introduction to a recipe, something like, “We were in Paris, in Saint-Germain, and I ate this wonderful dish, so I went home and tried to recreate it.” But my stories were turning into pages.

I remember asking my husband, “Do you think it would be stupid to have a book with these really long stories before each recipe?” I asked a few chef friends too, and they weren’t sure anyone would want to read all that.

But I thought, you know what? These stories are saying something. They want to be more than just a couple of paragraphs. I already had a blog where I wrote about food memories, so I went back to that. And that’s really how What the Pan Remembers came about. It was a long, sometimes difficult process of writing about myself. I don’t always come out looking good in these essays. I’m not always the perfect chef, and there were situations where I had to humble myself. But what was interesting was discovering all these memories. Some of them weren’t things I’d thought about in years, but as I was writing, I’d suddenly think, “Oh, I remember that.”

What the Pan Remembers, is an interesting title, isn’t it? Because I guess the pan’s always around for all of those moments.

Yes, the pan is, oh, it is all right, because I started with the title of the book first, and then, I was like, not that the pan that I’m personifying it anyway, but yes, there’s always a vessel or a pan or a casserole dish that holds the food, and whether you mess up, you forget an ingredient, you burn something. You ran out of something. The parent kind of knows, because I remember when I was trying to explain to people, I’m like, it’s almost like the panels, all the secrets. It doesn’t matter where I’ve been. And it’s also heard conversations, also, just pretending it. personifying and then thinking like, is it really going to tell all in the book? like, oh, that’s really great. it? but I didn’t write it that way. But yeah, the pan does remember everything and it holds everything and then every kitchen, I don’t care where you are in the world. There’s some type of pan or vessel that’s holding the food that’s accompanying you every single, day. Yeah, that’s right.

That’s the reality of running a restaurant. You think you’re going to be making duck confit, your own stocks and bread every day. Sometimes you do. But sometimes you have to ask, do I have the staff? Do I have the space? If I make my own stock, who’s watching it, and where am I going to store it? Am I going to have to charge $32 for the dish? Everything had to fit in those two little refrigerators, and everything had to earn its place.

Alexis Hernandez

Alexis, you didn’t start off as a chef. When did you decide you wanted to be a professional chef, as opposed to just cooking at home?

I wish I could say, like most chefs, that I was interested in food from the age of eight, but not really. I was interested in lots of other things. It was when I graduated from college and got my first apartment that I thought, well, I’m an adult now. I need to learn how to cook. At the time, I was working for a wireless company called T-Mobile. I’d always been interested in cookbooks, but more in the science behind the cooking. Why do you add vinegar when you’re poaching eggs? What does acid do to proteins? Why do some chefs roast beets with salt while others boil them? I wanted to understand why things were done a certain way. Eventually, I left my job and moved with my husband, Marty, to our family farm in Indiana. That Christmas, we were exchanging gifts and I opened a box to find a chef’s coat. I remember thinking, oh, Marty, he wants me to wear this? This is so stupid! But I didn’t want to make a face because I knew he’d probably put a lot of thought into it. Then I pulled out the jacket and at the bottom of the box was a note saying, “You’ve been accepted to Sullivan Culinary University.” I was like, “Marty, did you fake an application?” And he said, “I did! Isn’t it great? You got accepted!” But I said, “Marty, I need to work.” And he said, “You’re never going to get this opportunity again. You’ve always been interested in food. You read cookbooks almost like they’re novels.” And he was right. I’d read them and make notes. I wanted to know why chefs paired certain ingredients, why they’d use thyme or basil, or add those little crunchy things to a dessert. I was fascinated by it all. So I went to culinary school, and that’s when things really opened up for me. I started thinking, this could actually be a career. Instead of selling phones and telling people, “For $39.99, you can get free texting and international calls,” I could be doing something I was genuinely interested in. At that point in my life, it felt pretty decadent to leave my job, move to Indiana with Marty and then say, well, I’m not going to work. I’m going to culinary school instead. But I loved it. I started to realise how much thought goes into what chefs do. Sometimes it’s something as simple as roasting cipollini onions with a little salt and adding some ten-year-old balsamic. Other times it’s much more complicated. That’s when I realised I could actually do something with food, rather than just reading recipes before I went to bed.

How long was that culinary course?

It was a two-year associate’s degree, but I’d already done a bachelor’s degree, so they accepted my credits for English, maths, science and all those things. I managed to do the two years in one. I was very focused on finishing it. At that point, I just wanted to be able to say, “Wow, I went to culinary school.” I never really thought I’d turn it into something. But yes, it was a two-year course.

And were you working in restaurants as well? Did you do a stage or get hands-on experience?

I did. When I was in culinary school, I worked at a restaurant called Le Relais in Louisville, Kentucky. We were living in Indiana, just across the river, so it took about 40 minutes to get there. The school was in Louisville too. I remember asking one of the chefs if I could stage somewhere after school, and he said, “Go talk to this chef. I know him.”

The chef at the restaurant was surprised because people don’t normally stage every day after school. They might do it once or twice a week, or after they graduate. But I did it the whole time. I’d go to school from about six until two, then get to the restaurant by three or three-thirty.

It was a classic French restaurant, and the funny thing was that a lot of what we learned at school didn’t happen quite the same way in a real restaurant. You think the garde-manger station will only do salads, desserts and charcuterie, and another station will do something else. No. Everybody did everything. And it wasn’t always as organised as you imagine.

Sometimes there were shortcuts, and I’d think, “Oh my God, they’re cheating!” But when you have to get the food out, you have to get it out. Sometimes they’d run out of something and I’d assume they’d tell the customer they couldn’t serve the dish. No, they’d come up with another sauce. I was learning something formally at school and then seeing what happened in this very nice French restaurant overlooking the airport. It was interesting.

And then you had your own place?

I did, yes. It was called Union Hill Kitchen. After graduating, I said to Marty, “We need to find a place.” I’d already been doing catering, renting commercial kitchens where I could legally prepare the food. At that time, you couldn’t cater out of your home.

Finding a space was an adventure. I did anything I could myself, and we brought people in for things I couldn’t do, like building walls. The place we found was an old garage, where people used to get their tyres and oil changed. We transformed it little by little.

Even before we found the space, I’d go to used restaurant-supply places and think about what I would need. I’d plan a menu in my head and work out the equipment for it: a flat top, a fryer, refrigeration, all of that. We rented a storage unit, and I started buying things. I actually have photographs and videos from that time. People weren’t recording everything back then the way they do now, but I was.

I’d buy plates and chairs whenever I could. I remember finding these beautiful marble tables that had come from a Ritz-Carlton somewhere. They were about ten dollars each! They had a few cracks, but they were beautiful. By the time we opened, I had about 90 per cent of what we needed. I put down the floor, installed a little grease trap because we needed one for the kitchen, and got everything ready. There are so many stories from that time. It was a lot of fun.

When was that?

That was 2012. I had the restaurant for five years. Closing it was hard, and I struggled with what it meant for my identity as a chef. Afterward, I became an executive chef for Delta in Atlanta, designing food for international flights. But even now, if I tell someone I’m a chef, they ask, “What restaurant are you at?” And when you’re not in a restaurant, there’s this feeling that maybe you’re not really a chef anymore.

When I was closing Union Hill Kitchen, my best friend Jeb, who has this very deep voice, said, “So what are you going to do now, on the other side of the stove?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, you’ve been a chef on this side, and now you’re going to be on the other side. You’re not going to be in a restaurant. You’re going to do something more corporate.”nThat stayed with me. It’s where the name of my blog, The Other Side of the Stove, came from. I still use it on Instagram. I’ve carried that name with me ever since the restaurant closed.

That’s quite a different journey from a lot of chefs. You graduated and didn’t spend very long working for other people. Was having your own place important to you?

Yes. I’d staged at Le Relais and worked at another restaurant in Louisville called Jack Fry’s. Then we moved from Indiana to Atlanta, and I tried to find work. At one point I thought, maybe I’m not supposed to work in food. Maybe I should go back to what I used to do, managing multi-unit retail stores.

But nobody wanted me for those jobs either. They’d look at my résumé and say, “You went to culinary school. Why do you want to come back to retail?” I’d tell them I’d done it for the experience, but they couldn’t understand why I’d left work to study cooking and work in restaurants, only to return to corporate America. So I thought, well, I’m going to open my own place. By then I was doing catering, and people seemed to like the food I was making.

What style of food was it?

It was New American, but not the fancy kind. In Atlanta, people want Southern food, and a lot of those dishes weren’t really in my wheelhouse. People would say, “You should put pimento cheese on the menu.” I’d say, “Thank you so much. I’ll consider it,” but it wasn’t something I’d naturally make. And if it wasn’t something I would make, it wouldn’t feel authentic to me.

Almost every recipe had a story. Before the servers went on the floor, they had to know those stories in case a customer asked. If someone wanted to know why I made ropa vieja with curry, the ropa vieja came from my Cuban heritage, but I was bringing in another influence from my own experience. I tried to stay true to myself. There was a lot of pork, bacon and lechón. People would say, “This is very pork-heavy.” Well, yes! I’m American, but my heritage is Cuban. There was a classic Cuban lechón with black beans, but I might put rosemary in it. I wasn’t claiming it was traditional or authentic. I was borrowing little things from the experiences I’d had.

If I cooked with you at your house and saw you doing something, I’d ask, “What are you doing?” And you might say, “Oh, my grandmother used to do that when I came home from school.” If it stayed with me, I’d go away and read everything I could about it, then start making it myself. In a restaurant, though, you also want to make things with as few ingredients as possible. You don’t need 500 ingredients, unless perhaps you’re making a barbecue sauce! I used to get frustrated because I wanted to change the menu. I got sick of making the same things. It’s like playing the same song day after day after day.

And I didn’t have a walk-in cooler. I had these little True refrigerators, so everything in there had to pay its rent. A dish had to sell enough to justify taking up that space. Marty would look at the books and say, “You’d better figure something out, because this dish isn’t doing very well.” He’d ask why I was buying so many cherry tomatoes. I’d say, “Because I’m roasting them for the bruschetta.” And he’d say, “Well, you’d better take it off the menu if it’s not paying the rent in that little space.” So I had to think about every ingredient. But then people would come in and say, “Oh, I’ve come for the cassoulet.” And I’d think, “But it’s summer! Why do you want cassoulet? That’s a winter dish!” Or they’d come in wanting something I’d made in spring, like chicken-liver Pop-Tarts, and I’d be trying to move on to the next season.

People didn’t always eat seasonally. They knew what they liked, and they wanted it. If I changed the menu, some customers were upset because their favourite dish was gone. If I didn’t change it, the people who came every Friday would say, “Well, there’s nothing new.” You were always trying to keep both groups happy.

It’s a tricky tension, isn’t it, between what the chef wants and what the public wants?

It really is. In school, you imagine all the things you’re going to make. But then you see a plate come back through the dish pit and think, “Why didn’t they eat it all?” If there were just a couple of pieces left, fine. But if most of a dish came back, I was concerned. I didn’t want anyone to pay for something I’d made and not enjoy it.

I remember I won an award for one of Atlanta’s best burgers. We had three burgers on the menu, including a mofongo burger, and I decided to make a new one with this really smoky barbecue sauce. I was excited about it, but nobody ordered it. The staff told the story behind the burger, as they did with all the dishes, but it still didn’t sell. Then one day I was driving past a fast-food place and saw a sign saying “Smokehouse Burger”. And I thought, “Oh my God. That’s it.” I remembered what we’d learned at school about menu descriptions and how they make people want to order something. I changed the name to Smokehouse Burger, and suddenly it started selling.

That’s the reality of running a restaurant. You think you’re going to be making duck confit, your own stocks and bread every day. Sometimes you do. But sometimes you have to ask, do I have the staff? Do I have the space? If I make my own stock, who’s watching it, and where am I going to store it? Am I going to have to charge $32 for the dish? Everything had to fit in those two little refrigerators, and everything had to earn its place.

How many people did the restaurant seat?

Sixty. We were closed on Sundays and Mondays. I went to church on Sundays, and if I’d opened more than five days a week, I’d have needed more staff so everyone could have their days off. Fridays and Saturdays were our busiest days.

People glamourise chefs, but so much of it is just work. I bought nearly everything myself, almost every day. We made candied bacon that went on top of our devilled eggs, and it was one of our most popular dishes. Some mornings I’d get out of the car and smell the cinnamon and caramel and think, “Oh, I love that.” Other mornings I’d think, “I hate that bacon. I’m so sick of it!”

Then I’d go to a table and someone would say, “Oh my God, I love this dish!” And I’d say, “Thank you so much,” while thinking, “I cannot make another plate of that ropa vieja with curry.” But I couldn’t take it off because people loved it.

People ask chefs, “What’s your signature dish?” I don’t know. I don’t have one. My signature dish when I’m home alone might be a frozen pizza! If Marty and I are together, I’ll make something fresh. But on my own, I’ll buy fried chicken from Publix, put a little lemon rice and sourwood honey with it, and I’m done for the night.

When people come to my house, they’re nosy about what’s in my refrigerator. They look inside and it’s just pickles and water, the same as yours. It’s a little messy. Everything isn’t beautifully labelled and lined up.

Chefs are regular people. Yes, sometimes I eat McDonald’s or Burger King. Not all the time, but I do. Tonight I’m making Angus beef hot dogs. I cut little ridges into them and grill them. People see that on my Instagram and say, “I’m shocked you’re a chef and you eat hot dogs!” Yes, I eat hot dogs too! Sometimes I buy really good ones from somewhere like Snake River Farms, but a regular meal is just fine with me.

Did the restaurant come to a natural conclusion? Did you know it was time to finish?

I was coming to the end of my lease, so I had to decide whether to renew it and perhaps change the concept. I was getting a little bored with Union Hill Kitchen, and certain things were happening in my life that made me wonder whether to keep going. The landlord loved me, and the area had really needed the restaurant when we opened. There wasn’t much of a dining scene there. People would tell me, “I’m so glad I don’t have to drive to Buckhead anymore.” They liked that Union Hill felt a little fancy, but without the attitude.

I was waiting for some kind of sign, and eventually something happened that I took as my sign. So I closed it. It took about six months to remove everything and clean the space. I wanted to give it back in better condition than I’d found it, because I’d put so much into making it nice. It had been entirely mine. It wasn’t a chef-owner situation where somebody else was investing. It was my retirement money, my everything. I needed it to succeed, and it did. We got past those first three-, six- and nine-month milestones and started making money after about the second year. Having Marty looking at the finances helped. He’d say, “This isn’t working. Shorten the menu. You don’t need so many things.” When I look at the original menus now, I can see how the ingredients and dishes slowly changed to make the restaurant more profitable.

But when I closed it, I didn’t know what to do next. I knew I didn’t want to close my own restaurant just to go and work in somebody else’s. Being the owner gave me freedom. I could decide to go to Paris for four days, or visit my mother, and leave the team to handle things. When I’d worked at Jack Fry’s, I had to bake bread for service every day. Whether I wanted to or not, that was my job.

I looked for work and got discouraged. Then I saw an advertisement for a job at Delta. I thought, “They’re never going to pick me. I don’t have any airline catering experience.” But I applied anyway. I didn’t even fix up my résumé. I just sent it in. When the recruiter called, I said, “Did you see my résumé? I don’t have any experience in this at all.” And they said, “We know. We want to talk to you.” I didn’t think they’d seriously consider me. Then I went in for the interview and told the chef, “I want you to know, I really don’t know anything about airline catering.” And he said, “We don’t want somebody with airline catering experience. We want somebody who knows nothing about it.” I said, “Well, then you’re going to want me, because everything you’ve described, I know nothing about!”

I had to do an audition with four other people. I’d already been on Food Network, including Cutthroat Kitchen, so I knew a little about competing. We went from room to room. There’d be 20 minutes of questions about operations, then another room for procurement. I’d say, “Well, I’ve never worked on this scale. At my restaurant I bought 20 pounds of beets, not 500.”

Then we had to cook. They asked what I normally cooked, and at the time I was cooking a lot of salmon. So they brought me salmon and said, “Make something.” I dusted it with a little cinnamon, salt and garlic and cooked it the way I normally would. Some of the other candidates already worked for Delta. I thought there was no way they’d pick me. At the end, about eight or nine people sat with me and started saying nice things about my attitude and my food. I thought, “Here comes the kiss-off. They’re being kind before they say no.”

Then they said, “We want to offer you the job.”

I said, “What? Really?”

They liked that the dishes were simple, tasted good and that I could explain them. I wasn’t trying to impress anybody. Other people were rolling sushi. I thought, good luck to you! I just cooked something I knew how to make.

It wasn’t an easy start. The chef who hired me said, “There are a lot of silos here, and I want you to break them down.” I said, “What do you mean, break them down?” Different departments guarded their own territory. The executive chef was expected to stay in the kitchen, even though other departments were making decisions that affected the food. We’d specify a particular plate for a particular dish, and another plate would turn up. We’d order Chioggia beets and someone would substitute ordinary red beets. But those weren’t the specifications.

I started saying, “No, I ordered this. I’m not substituting it.” And people did not like that. I wasn’t very popular at first.

There were days when I’d get there at five in the morning and by three in the afternoon I’d be exhausted. My office had glass walls and my desk faced the wall. Sometimes I’d sit there with big tears coming down my face. My two sous chefs would come in and say, “Are you okay, Chef?” And I’d say, “Not really.” They’d tell me, “It’s okay. We know what you’re trying to do, and we support you.”

Eventually things improved. People started to see that I was trying to bring attention back to the little details. There had been standards, but people weren’t always following them. The chef had asked me early on, “Are you going to have a problem following a specification? You’re a chef, and you’re always going to think you can make it better. Are you going to be okay just following what’s written?” And I said, “Yes. I’m happy to follow the specifications.” That’s what the job required.

I remember going into the receiving area and seeing a big pallet of produce sitting there. I said, “Didn’t this arrive at two? It’s three-twenty-five.” They were still trying to get it put away, but there was only so long food could be out of temperature control. I pointed that out, and it didn’t go over well. The woman in charge called her boss. But eventually they understood that food safety and quality were part of my responsibility.

I’d tell them, “Everything here is for the food. The cups, the napkins, the plates, the cleaning of the silverware, all of it.” If the correct plates hadn’t come back from a flight, we still needed the correct plates for the next one. I think I helped bring some respect back to the culinary department. It was completely different from owning a little restaurant.

How long did you stay there?

About four years. Then COVID hit. I’ve written about it in What the Pan Remembers, in an essay called “A Kitchen with No Windows”. That’s what it felt like. It was almost like being in a casino. You couldn’t tell whether it was raining or sunny outside. In winter you’d arrive in the dark and leave in the dark. You lost track of everything.

Before COVID, the place was bustling. There were about 1,800 people working there, and we could be producing around 19,000 meals. Then suddenly it was just me and a handful of people. I lost my team. They only needed the executive chef, and we weren’t really cooking anymore.

We were plating pre-prepared commissary meals for first class. Sometimes there were only three flights. I’d open a meal container, arrange the peas and chicken on the plate, take a photograph and say, “Okay, this is what we’re serving today.” It was very strange.

When you’re busy, eight hours can fly by. But when it was that quiet, I’d check everything, look at the clock and think hours had passed. Seven minutes! And the kitchen had lost its sound. Normally there’s this constant rumble, almost like the place is alive. Suddenly it was silent.

Before that, the precision of the operation was incredible. Even if my team hadn’t cooked the food, I was responsible for how it was plated. If the specification said four grams of parsley, it meant four grams of parsley. I’d walk through production and ask, “Are you weighing that?” And they’d say, “No, Chef.” I’d think, “You know I’m going to come by and ask you. Why aren’t you weighing it?”

On an aircraft, weight matters. The meal has to stay within a certain specification. And if an audit found the portions outside the acceptable range, I was accountable. It didn’t matter whether I’d personally plated it or whether I was on vacation in Key West. I’d get a call about something that had gone wrong, and it came back to my leadership. Putting a restaurant on a plane is complicated. You can’t forget the oven mitt, the tongs to serve the bread, or any of the equipment. Everything has to be there. And feedback could be immediate. A passenger might post a photo asking, “Why is my steak smaller than my wife’s?” Both steaks could weigh six ounces, but one was from a thicker part of the fillet and one was from the centre, so they looked different. I’d be sitting there explaining, “They’re both six ounces.” Then I’d make a new rule: if two people sitting together ordered steak, make sure the pieces looked the same. They shouldn’t look at each other’s plates and feel that one had been short-changed. There were so many little things like that.

We’d be making enormous batches of butter chicken for flights to India, then moving the food into blast chillers. It was like a storm of ice in there. Everything was monitored by computers. Once the food came out of the ovens, it had to reach certain temperatures within very strict time limits. You’d watch the monitors and make sure it was cooling quickly enough through the danger zone. If a batch didn’t cool within the required time, it could all have to be thrown out. And if food we’d prepared wasn’t used by the next day’s cut-off, we had to discard it, even if it would still have been safe under ordinary food-service rules. Everything was about safety.

We planned meals from flight numbers and pre-orders, and I’d build in a little extra. Then someone on the night shift would call and say, “Chef, we’re missing a fillet.” I’d say, “How? There were 49 when I left, and we only needed 45!” You’d wonder where it had gone. Airline catering was fast, enormous and very different from anything I’d done before.

I wasn’t sure I would make it. A lot of the knowledge there came from people who’d spent years in the industry, moving from cook to sous chef to executive chef. I’d arrived without that background. Later, my chef said, “I didn’t know if you were going to make it. I’d heard about you crying.” He said, “Your passion and your strength are in your emotions. If you needed to let it out, that’s okay.”

I never imagined I’d end up doing that job. I applied almost just to make myself feel better after getting nowhere with other applications. But I’m glad I did. Restaurant work is a hard business. You’re working on Labour Day, the Fourth of July, Christmas, whenever everybody else is out eating. When it’s your own restaurant, you have that feeling of, this is my baby, and you do whatever it takes. I remember getting up early every day to go to the fishmonger for Union Hill. I wasn’t buying 500 pounds of fish. I might want ten pounds of this, fifteen of that and five pounds of scallops. But sometimes I’d get there at five-thirty or six am and they’d say, “We’re sold out.” I’d say, “How can you be sold out already?” They’d tell me a restaurant group had come in and bought everything. I’d ask if I could order ahead, and they’d say, “Well, you don’t order that much.” I thought, “I’ve been coming here every day!” So I started arriving even earlier and waiting outside to see who was taking all the fish. It drove me crazy because if I had halibut on the menu, I wanted to serve halibut. I hated having to tell a guest we didn’t have something because the fish mafia had been there first!

And you mentioned Food Network and Cutthroat Kitchen. How did you get into television?

I really wanted to be on Food Network Star. I guess I’m the kind of person who’ll keep trying. You can make fun of me, but I’ll try and try again. I kept telling Marty, “I’m going to get on Food Network Star.” He’d say, “Okay, sweetie.” I’d send in audition tapes and get rejected. Finally I said, “We’re going to Chicago. They’re doing auditions there, and I want them to say no to my face instead of rejecting another video.” We’d lived in Chicago before, and I wanted to make the trip and try in person. You had to bring a signature dish. At the time, I was making a pot roast with carrot ribbons, English peas and a reduction, so that’s what I brought. I had to present the dish and talk about it on camera. It felt awkward. There were only two cameras, but they told me to speak to the person and not look at the camera. Of course, you want to look at it! Now I’m fine with cameras, but then it was strange.

Was this before culinary school?

Yes, before culinary school. Anyway, they called and told me I was on the show. And that was an education in reality television. Is it really reality? I learned a lot. I only lasted two episodes before I was eliminated. It was difficult, and there were things I didn’t understand then that I understand now. For example, you’d see everyone walking into a house and assume it was happening naturally. But they’d ask us to walk in again, maybe with different people, talking about something or acting excited. They were collecting extra footage they could use when they edited the story. You’d be walking somewhere and they’d say, “Go back. Do it again. You stand over here.” It wasn’t always like that, but I began to understand how much they were constructing for television.

I remember presenting beignets to Wolfgang Puck. I would normally have fried them, even though I wasn’t making them in the traditional way. But you don’t get much sleep on those shows, and a culinary producer suggested that I bake them. I thought, okay, I’ll bake them. Well, they didn’t turn out. They were raw inside.

Giada De Laurentiis was very nice. She said, “Chef, they’re raw inside.” And I said, “Thank you, Giada. I love you.”

But Wolfgang Puck went on and on about how terrible they were. I remember him saying he wouldn’t serve them to his dog. I was upset, but I was trying to be respectful. Whenever he said something awful, my eyes would dart around the room, looking at the cameras. And of course, those were the shots they used. I didn’t understand then how the different camera angles would be edited together. At the end I said, “I’m sorry, Chef,” and left. When you were eliminated, you didn’t go straight home. You went to a hotel, and as other contestants were eliminated, they’d arrive there too. I’d try to comfort them because I knew how it felt. I made friends on that show. I remember getting to the hotel and finding a lovely note from Aarti Sequeira. She was always very sweet.

I opened my restaurant after that. Later, the producers of Top Chef got in touch. My friend Art Smith, who used to cook for Oprah Winfrey, gave me some advice about the auditions. I met the producers and they asked, “Are you this energetic all the time?” I said, “Yes, if I’m comfortable, this is how I am.”

Then they asked to come to my restaurant so I could cook them dinner. It was a Monday, when we were closed, and I said, “Well, my brigade won’t be there.” They said, “If you’re on the show, you’ll be cooking by yourself.” Fair enough!

The brief was very interpretive. They’d say things like, “Cook something that reminds you of death,” or “Cook something from your childhood.” They paid for the ingredients, and I made the dishes. I didn’t get on Top Chef, but I was referred to another production company, and that’s how Cutthroat Kitchen came along. That was so much fun. All the chefs on that show know how to cook. But when someone ties one of your hands behind your back and asks you to prepare a chicken, suddenly it becomes a lot harder. I realised that even if I didn’t win, if I was entertaining enough, I might stay until the end and get just as much airtime. That was my thinking. They even filmed the sad walk of shame at the beginning, before you knew what was going to happen!

I did win, although I remember it being a tie with another wonderful chef. But the big thing I learned was that, on Cutthroat Kitchen, the chefs tell the story while they’re cooking. The producers want to know what you’re thinking, how you’re feeling about the sabotage, what you’re going to do next.

They never had to come over and prompt me. I was always saying something. I’d be teasing the other chefs, saying, “You’re not a real chef! You’re a construction worker!” or “You own a catering company? You’ve never worked in a restaurant!” I really gave it to them. I’m sure the producers were thinking, keep him on, because he’s keeping the story going.

I became a bit of a villain, which is why I was invited back for the Evilicious tournament with the other villainous chefs. That was fun too.

And I’d learned from Food Network Star. When another chef was explaining their dish and the cameras were still on me, I’d make faces. I knew that if the editors wanted a reaction shot, they’d have one. I understood how it worked by then, and I had a lot of fun with it.

It’s amazing. I feel like so many of the things you’ve dreamed of doing, you’ve achieved. What are you doing now?

Right now I’m working on my third book, which is about Cuban food. I’m also writing a lot on my blog, The Other Side of the Stove, and for a local newspaper. Those pieces are quite similar to the food-memory essays in What the Pan Remembers. I really enjoy writing.

I do a lot of short food-science videos on Instagram too. Nothing too geeky. Just things like, if you want to make a vinaigrette, remember three to one. Chefs don’t necessarily memorise recipes; they memorise ratios. Three parts oil or fat to one part acid. The fat might be olive oil or bacon grease. The acid might be lemon juice, orange juice or pomegranate juice. Once you understand the ratio, you can make it your own. I do these little one-minute or ninety-second videos.

I spent a lot of time writing when I did my bachelor’s degree. Back then I’d think, “When am I ever going to use these literary devices? Why do I need to know how to set up a story or build tension?” Little did I know.

Writing What the Pan Remembers made me think carefully about those things. When you’re writing a newspaper column, the reader gets one story a month. In a book, the essays come one after another. So I had to think about the themes, the structure of each essay, how they fitted together and how each one ended. Do I wrap it up neatly? Do I leave a little tension? Can I trust the reader to understand what I’m saying without spelling it all out?

I write a lot, just like I talk. You can hear me telling you all these little details! So when I edit, I have to ask, “Is that necessary? Can I say it in fewer words?”

It’s almost like cooking. You start with a recipe and then reduce it to the fewest ingredients that will still give you what you want. I find myself doing the same thing with writing. So that’s what I’m doing now, a lot of writing, and I’m starting to think about the visual language for the next book.

Amazing. Thank you so much, Alexis. I love all the details. It’s been a ride.

What are you going to do today? Are you going to the beach?

No, actually, Melbourne has four seasons in one day, and we’ve already had all four this morning. I walked down to Pilates, and by the time I walked home it was pouring with rain. While we’ve been talking, I’ve had blue sky out one window and grey clouds out the other.

I hope you have a good morning. I’m going to make myself a martini because it’s the beginning of my evening.

Perfection. Enjoy. You deserve it!