Reality Bites

Searching for the Secret Ingredient in the Wrong Kitchen

I grew up in San Francisco with parents who were culinary sadists: Artists who ate organic before it was cool, but lacked creativity in the kitchen.

At fourteen I invented “deconstructed Top Ramen,” finding six distinct ways to eat a square of noodles and packet of MSG.
By my twenties, it was a steady stream of burritos and pizza slices. Food was either about survival, when there wasn’t enough, or inconvenience in times of plenty. I couldn’t have cared less about Michelin stars.

Then I met Heidi. She taught me the subtle nuance of adding spice, slowing down, allowing flavors to develop and mingle. In the blush of those early fever days, I learned that “haricots verts” was a fancy name for green beans, and found an appreciation for the sweet and savory moments in life.

This passion for creation led to a daughter. Heidi had a career, while my resume was crowded with telemarketing and under-the-table construction gigs. It made sense for me to be the one to stay home.
In charge of dinner, I threw myself into recipes, chopping carrots at nap time and reducing sauces during Sesame Street. As my daughter grew, she would join me for afternoons covered in flour, rolling dough into snakes.

I blinked and she was five, ready for school. Pushing forty I had no plan outside of being a dad. Raising my daughter was such a big part of my identity.

Instead of career counseling, I decided to be on TV.
I ran across a casting call for a reality show called “MasterChef”, hosted by an angry British man who resembled a sentient buttermilk biscuit, and decided this was my chance.

I whipped up strawberry mousse inside a delicate chocolate bowl and carried it carefully to the audition in San Francisco. After plating my dish and parading in front of producers with blinding white teeth and matching lattes, the real hoop-jumping began. Weeks of on-camera interviews, a “day in the life” video with testimonials and a mock dinner party. Reams of forms, personality tests, and a session with a shrink to prove I wasn’t a sociopath.

At each step they said I wasn’t yet on the show, but every day the phone didn’t ring I wanted it more. I morphed into a cartoon version of myself, dressing in celebrity-chef cosplay, complete with hair gel, mustache wax and a black chef coat with skulls on the sleeves. I looked like the love child of Johnny Cash and Guy Fieri. My sister joked about hair plugs and Botox. I laughed, but the truth was, if it got me on the show I would have done it.

At last the phone rang. Two weeks later, I was shuffled out of the Burbank airport to stand in a hotel lobby with ninety-nine fellow contestants from all over the country.

In a room of distinct personalities, there were clusters of doppelgangers. Tough talking New Yorkers, southern belles, jocks, hayseeds, and the three beards: The “Sons of Anarchy” biker, the camouflaged “Duck Dynasty” swamp wizard, and me, the aging rockabilly dad. Only one of each type could get on the show.

They confiscated our phones and escorted us to our rooms. I would be away from home with no communication, for either five days or twelve weeks, depending on if I got on the show. It was like prison with basic cable, tiny shampoo bottles, and complimentary copies of USA Today.

The only place to go was a terrible restaurant in the lobby called the Daily Grill. It was ironic that a building full of great cooks should be forced to spend their per diem on three square meals of wet sawdust. We joked about storming the kitchen as a group. Everyone was itching to cook something, but with each passing day in this Hollywood purgatory, I learned how little the show had to do with food.

The upside of no screens was human connection. Over plates of Jalapeno poppers we shared personal stories and even developed a game called “Cards Against MasterChef” with crude foodie innuendos and inappropriate references about the hosts written on cocktail napkins.

Curfew was eight-thirty. Certain rooms hosted secret late night parties, but I was too paranoid to be much fun. I felt like every move I made was part of the audition and dutifully returned to my cell to drink tap water and watch Storage Wars.

Twice a day only a dozen contestants were bused to the mysterious kitchen test.. After a week of expensive booze, bad food, and simmering pressure, it was finally my turn.

Through the tinted windows the city became an anthropological exhibit. I saw the bones and fossils of television hopefuls who came before. I felt the blood of Bob Barker pumping from the center of the earth as we passed an oil rig wedged between 1950’s bungalows. How many people had sat in these seats, lured by bright lights into tar pits like woolly mammoths, while saber-tooth tigers licked their chops over non-disclosure agreements?

I followed those same Hollywood lights into a shabby waiting room. The group before us spilled out, wearing expressions of relief and frustration, mum about the details.

The actual test room was small, with stoves, a wall of spices and gadgets, but not the lavish set from the show. Just a plain room with a two way mirror and a handful of sluggish stagehands. On the bright side, it was the first time the audition focused on making actual food since the whole process began. I had hoped for more, but it was my turn to cook a gourmet dish in the shortest hour of my life. I made Creole barbecued shrimp, a parsnip and carrot puree, couscous, and a grilled lemon I spent way too much time on and forgot to put on the plate.

I beat myself up about the lemon until a tired PA led me into a camera test where a woman in the darkness tried to make me cry. She asked if I missed my daughter. I knew a little mist on the eyeballs would make a difference since everyone was supposed to cry on reality TV, but my tear ducts were as dry as the Styrofoam fruit around me.

The voice in the darkness changed angles. “How do you feel about your competition?”

Maybe I could have lied on day one, but after a week sharing stories and the same recirculated air with these people, who could say a mean word about any of them? An actor maybe, but no one in real life.
“They’re some of the best people I’ve ever met.” I said.

She closed her folder and sighed. That was the moment I lost the show.

The next day the losers gathered in the lobby, where a producer prattled on about being part of the “MasterChef Family.”
I have yet to receive a birthday card.

We had our last supper at the worst restaurant in the world. Throwing the rest of our per diem at the bar for a series of toasts. We swore to stay in touch, but most would never see each other again.

I called Heidi that night. Hearing the voice of someone who knew me, who understood in just a few words. That’s when the tears came. Not surrounded by fake fruit, but alone in a hotel lobby hearing “It’s ok, I love you.”

Back home, I still needed a job. I didn’t want this whole trial-by-spatula to be for naught, so I waltzed into a posh cafe in Oakland without a resume and told the owner I was his new cook. I also started a blog and planned a pop-up restaurant, but soon it felt like all the office gigs I’d hated, except I smelled like a sandwich at the end of the day. I tried to put my soul into it, but felt ego gratification more than anything else. I was trying to flatten myself back into two dimensions; the paper doll they wanted for the show. Finally, I just couldn’t do it anymore.

Looking for a change, I found work at a day program for adults with developmental disabilities. Surrounded by a beautiful sort of chaos, people bursting from their buses and into the program, shouting and buzzing with excitement under the fluorescent lights. The first thing I learned was the philosophy of putting people first, a profound shift in thought where, before adding any other adjectives, you see the person as your fellow human being.

My first day, I was thrust into teaching a cooking class using donated food from the local food bank. Sitting at a table with a dozen people, some non-verbal in wheelchairs, others talking a mile a minute, I opened a box of nearly expired cake mix. It was there, in that moment, I found the secret ingredient. The flavor missing from all those interviews, camera tests, ironed shirts and hair gel.

My daughter had needed me to warm her milk, to keep her safe from all the pointy things, to sing her to sleep with lullaby covers of rock and roll songs. Heidi and I started a recipe years before with the grain, the water and the salt. Our daughter added the sugar. Together we kneaded those essentials for survival, adding a part of each of us to make the bread rise.

When I flew to Los Angeles to become a reality TV star, I forgot to pack any of that. But I was lucky enough to find a new blend of the same spices Heidi and I experimented with. The same sugar my daughter sprinkled on cakes and pies during those endless afternoons. It was there, behind a box of Betty Crocker the whole time. The secret ingredient was hidden in the act of putting gloves on a curled hand and helping someone hold a wooden spoon.

Love was always the spice, the seasoning, the soul of the dish.