Wichita chef didn’t win ‘Guy’s Grocery Games,’ but she did conquer a bizarre ingredient
Midwesterners don’t eat canned bread.
We don’t even know what it is — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as it turns out.
So when Wichita chef Natasha Gandhi-Rue, owner of The Kitchen at 725 E. Douglas, was thrown a culinary curveball on Wednesday night’s episode of “Guy’s Grocery Games” and was instructed she had to incorporate the New England oddity into her Thanksgiving dish, she was confused.
“I don’t even know what canned bread is,” she said.
Gandhi-Rue, who was appearing on the show for the second time, first went for canned biscuits and crescent rolls before host and celebrity chef Guy Fieri fetched her an actual can of canned bread, which it turns out is sticky, brown and raisin filled.
Though she didn’t win on Wednesday — the title this time went to Oklahoma City chef Joseph Strange— Gandhi-Rue did end up in a three-way tie for second place.
Best of all, she managed to add some bacon to that canned bread and turn it into a stuffing that the celebrity judges actually liked.
Gandhi-Rue appeared on the Food Network game show for the first time in April 2020, when she won and pocketed $20,000. Though she initially planned to put that money toward her son’s college fund, she told producers on Wednesday’s show that she was forced to use it to keep her restaurant afloat during the pandemic.
As a winner, she was invited to compete again on a Thanksgiving-themed episode, which was filmed in the San Francisco area in August and aired at 8 p.m. on Wednesday.
This time, she was pitted against three other former winners, and all had one hour to create a Thanksgiving appetizer and a “show-stopping” Thanksgiving plate.
Gandhi-Rue prepared three types of bruschetta as her appetizer, and her Thanksgiving plate included sliced turkey, potatoes and Brussels sprouts.
At the end of the episode, Gandhi-Rue was gracious in defeat.
“Competing in ‘Guy’s Grocery Games’ is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” she said. “And I’m lucky. I got to do it twice.”
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