I realized I was in the wrong place fairly early in the experience and could have turned around and gone home but I'd cooked the food and made the trek, bleary eyed and slightly hungover, early on a chilly Saturday morning. I was going to see it through! Here's how it went down:
7:36 - Arrive at Flatotel in midtown Manhattan carrying carefully packaged food and all implements needed to plate it in a hurry. Yay. There's a parking lot directly next to the hotel. The line of contestants isn't very long but, it's also not inside and I'm not wearing a coat.
8:00 - A production assistant starts taking names and giving out numbers. I am #115 but I think they start at #90, so not bad at all. I later learn that the first guy in line got there at 3am, his name is Christopher and he's both a martial artist and a drummer.
8:00 - 8:45 - Wait. Chat with my new best friend, #114, who kindly sends her sister to Starbucks to get us coffee. Try to stay warm. Chat with #116 and her boyfriend, who've come up from Delaware and are making a weekend of it. We discuss our dishes and it seems I'm in between two raw tuna dishes. Interesting. I thought this this was a cooking show, right? Already getting annoyed with the guy in the Mickey Mouse shirt with the very pronounced Queens accent for being too... I don't know...too everything. Occasional updates from production assistants.
8:50 - Producer with thick Liverpool accent and a bull horn announces that they are going to start shooting the opening sequence with Joe Bastianich when he arrives at 9. Instructions are given and we are moved down the street and told to pick up a supplied sign if we want. I couldn't get there fast enough to grab Graham Elliot's blown up head so I decide to forgo the sign. Ooooh, the shiny show logo is mounted on a plexiglass stand in the middle of the sidewalk. Kind of cool.
9:00 - Joe arrives and we are instructed to spread out so we seem to fill the sidewalk -- perhaps they were anticipating more people for the crowd shots. Those with signs must hold them up high and everyone must chant "Mas-ter Chef! Mas-ter Chef!" as we march forward. Fist pumping is optional but heartily encouraged.
9:15 - 3-2-1 and GO! We march forward chanting, swarming past Joe as he leans on the plexiglass thing with the logo and speaks directly to the camera. The boom moves and captures the joy on the faces of those marching and chanting.
9:19 - 3-2-1 and do it again, this time with more feeling, louder and swarm around Joe more.
9:25 - Everyone spread out again -- fill the sidewalk. People are hand-picked to stand around Joe while he says, "New York" over and over. PAs fret that New Yorkers wear too much black and they want colorful people. "You're in black" says one to me as she passes me over for the prime Joe adjacency. I am wearing a light brown t-shirt, a light grey sweater, a light blue scarf and jeans. Hmmmm. Perhaps black means something else in TV land or maybe I'm just not the look they want.
9:40 - Finished shooting the opening sequence, we're back in line and they want us in order. I re-join my long lost friends, #114 and #116 and tell them how dorky I feel having just participated in something so corny. Everyone is starting to get excited and listens when the producer tells us how it's going to work. 30 people will be ushered into the tasting room. We will have 3 minutes to plate our food. A food judge will probably taste it. Joe will walk around and say hello and ask about our dishes. A PA from casting will interview us. Once our score cards are face down, we are not to pick them up or touch them. If we do, it's automatic disqualification.
10:00 - We're in -- at least the first 30 of us! I am finally warm. #114 has had to urinate for the last 40 minutes but decided to hold it, no matter how painful it is. I get my stuff out, ready to plate and they say, GO!
10:00 - 10:02 - Dump my pasta into a bowl, pour the hot water from the Thermos on it (YES, it's still practically boiling), strain the pasta, put it in the bowl, spoon the ragu on top neatly (YES, it's still steaming), place the dollop of ricotta dead center, sprinkle pre-chopped mint, add fresh ground pepper and then the whole mint leaf garnish. Wipe the edge of the bowl. Done...and there's still 1 minute left. Damn, I'm good.
And then we wait and I totally lose track of time. Mickey Mouse shirt is asked about his food first. It appears to be a grilled chicken sandwich on a store bought potato roll with what he calls "special sauce" he made with pre-packaged pickling spices. I hate him. #116 rolls her eyes. She understands. #114, keeps shifting her weight ...doing the "I have to pee" dance but won't ask a producer if it's ok to dash out. PAs come and take our pictures and pictures of our food. I am almost freaked out by #114's dish. It makes no sense... raw tuna rolled in pepper and sliced with curried apricots on top and grilled asparagus fanned out. It actually looks disgusting and doesn't smell good. #116 has made sushi. It's pretty.
Joe comes in with the camera crew and says hello to each contestant and asks about their dishes. When he gets to me, he says hello and uses my name (nice touch) asks what I've made and says he loves lamb ragu and asks if it's something I've made before. Yes, yes it is, Joe. It's that good. And that's it. He moves on to #114, picks up a fork and pokes her apricot and asks what it is with a somewhat dismayed look on his face. It seems like I got less time, and they didn't video me. Hmmmm.
Finally the food judge comes. She asks about my dish and how I transported it, kept it hot. She takes a forkful of the ragu and then goes back in for another bite, this time with the pasta. She says it's really delicious. Makes a note on my scorecard and goes. Then comes back and recommends to one of the PAs that if she wants pasta, she should eat mine because it's really that good. Hmmm, I guess I didn't do too shabby. Then the casting PA comes and does a perfunctory interview, cuts me off mid-sentence with "thank you" and walks away. I'm getting the sense I'm not fitting in here.
The food judges leave the room to deliberate and then the producer announces the contestants that should stay for the next round. Goodbye Mickey Mouse and your stupid sandwich. Goodbye #114 - it was nice to meet you but man, that food looked horrible. I am in the group of 12 to move on! We are shepherded to another room and then 6 of us are called in to yet another room to talk with the casting director and her assistant. We stand behind the blue line and are asked questions.
First guy is a character -- It's Christopher, the drumming martial artist who is also a 9/11 responder, and has multiple meaningful tattoos we get to see when he whips off his shirt. Second guy is a character too -- he has an orange stuffed with something brown infused with tea. He's working on chicken infused tea and does a rap to help us remember how to say "mouth" in Mandarin. Christopher joins in by beat boxing during the rap! Shave side of the head girl is next with her sad story of her premature infant (who is now 5 and fine) and how they said she'd never have another kid. She overcame the odds and had another and is a very happy stay at home mom at the age of 26 who needs multiple corrective surgeries for adhesions. She makes ice cream. Next is ToniAnne - yes, both names. She lost 155 pounds and is engaged. She is also well over 40 and gets considerably less time than the first 3. Lastly, a girl tells of her parents divorce and how her father isn't her father which was pretty obvious because both her parents are African-American and she's "this" as she gestures to herself, indicating that she is mixed. Luckily she met her biological father 3 weeks before he died (confirming that he is white) and because of her hard scrabble childhood she has a dream to open a place called Chocolate Plan (I thought she said Chocolate Land and was kind of excited at first) where poetry is performed and people who are poor eat on Sundays for free. Unfortunately, Chocolate Plan will be in Virginia where she lives so I will never get to see it.
And then there's me... I am boring. I cannot beat box. I was not raised by a single mother. I do not speak Chinese or have adhesions. I crack a joke about lack of self esteem that goes over like a lead balloon. So I stand there, uncomfortable in the company of people I initially thought were buffoons, wondering why I am even here and completely unable to put up the bullshit that I know will win them over.
I am dismissed, along with ToniAnne. Maybe if I had rapped or told of my inability to have a second child, the ensuing failed fertility treatments, my father's untimely death and how it has informed everything I have done since and especially my cooking, I would have made it through. But that isn't the truth - I have not been crippled and I have not been driven by the negatives in my life. And, I know that I am lucky not to have the stories that others did as part of my personal narrative. I don't want to be chosen for being over-the-top or sad or just plain obnoxious.
I wanted them to like my food, and they did.
