She won! Wichita chef cooks her way to victory on Food Network show hosted by Guy Fieri
A local chef earned the nickname “Wizard of Wichita” on national television on Wednesday night and was crowned the winner of an episode of “Guy’s Grocery Games,” a show hosted by celebrity chef Guy Fieri on Food Network.
Chef Natasha Gandhi-Rue, who owns The Kitchen at 725 E. Douglas, was one of four chefs from around the country who competed on the episode, titled “Clearance Wars,” and she survived three rounds, ultimately being crowned the winner by a celebrity panel of judges.
She left with $20,000, which she says she’ll use to help send her son, Jack, to college. His dream is MIT.
Gandhi-Rue, dressed in red, smiled and joked throughout the episode, where she was seen making three dishes that incorporated random clearance items chosen by Fieri, including marshmallows, shrimp ramen, jarred giardiniera and Frosted Flakes. The chefs who compete on the show are sent scrambling through an on-set grocery store for the items needed to make the dishes.
During the first round, she prepared a surf-and-turf dish, coating scallops in Frosted Flakes, and the judges loved it. She survived to the second round, where she made a mac and cheese that incorporated marshmallows into the sauce. It wasn’t quite cheesy enough, one judge said, but it was good enough to get her to the final round — a feat that inspired Fieri to nickname her “The Wizard of Wichita.”
In the final, she went head-to-head with a chef from Alabama named Lindsey. The two were required to make a spicy seafood feast, but they couldn’t use any fresh produce. Gandhi-Rue made crab cakes, a cioppino stew and fried giardiniera, and the judges decided hers was best.
On a Facebook chat after the show aired, Gandhi-Rue talked about flying to California in October to film the episode, which she said took about six hours total.
When it was over, she said, she was so excited but was in the San Francisco area alone. She went back to her hotel room, ordered pizza and spent hours on the phone recounting the day’s events with husband, Scott Rue.
I’ve never won anything,” she said. “...You can’t really celebrate when you’re by yourself, so today we popped some champagne and celebrated.”
During the chat, Gandhi-Rue also said that she hopes to celebrate with her customers once the coronavirus pandemic has passed and everyone can be together.
She also revealed plans to launch a series of online cooking lessons on a new YouTube channel called Cooking with You and Natasha Gandhi-Rue. She was once an instructor with Williams Sonoma and wants to get back in touch with her teaching roots, she said.
Those who missed the episode can catch a repeat on at 11 p.m. Thursday on Food Network, cable channel 40 in Wichita. It will also be online in about a week.
This story was originally published April 15, 2020 at 9:46 PM.
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