It wasn’t so long ago that Yarmouth chef Christian Hayes won the Food Network show “Chopped” and brought home $10,000.
Next up: Austin Miller, chef/owner of Mami at 339 Fore St. in Portland.
Miller will be on the show at 10 p.m. April 17, according to the restaurant’s Facebook page. That episode, according to the Food Network’s website, is called “A Frog Leg Up” and begins with a mystery basket filled with doughnut-shaped sushi. The second basket contains the frog legs hinted at in the title of the episode.
Miller is the latest of several Maine chefs who have gone on the food competition show.
Duckfat’s Rob Evans first went onto the show in 2011, winning $10,000 in that appearance. He made a return appearance in 2013 on “Chopped Champions,” which pitted 16 past winners of “Chopped” against one another in the kitchen again.
In 2012, Melissa “Missy” Corey, a cook at Duckfat, took down three other competitors on “Chopped” to win $10,000.
And in 2016, Shaun Yazbek, the chef at Maine’s legendary Dysart’s restaurant and truck stop, who started as a part-time line cook 22 years ago, tested his culinary prowess on the hit cooking show, competing for the $10,000 prize in an episode titled “Truck Stop Stars.”
Yazbek was chopped in the second round.
Here’s hoping they don’t bring back the pork brains in milk, although they were the item that helped Hayes win his competition.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
