Top Chef Casting Call in Seattle
On March 9, Bravo held a Top Chef audition at the Hotel 1000 and Nosh Pit went behind the scenes. Weirdly enough, nobody was cooking.
Posted by: Katie Ormsby on Mar 09, 2011 at 04:50PM
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Lisa Bay Adams, the Bravo casting director who tested out our chefs.
View Slideshow »Culinary student Roy Buck packed his knives…after realizing there wouldn’t be any cooking at the audition.
View Slideshow »Buck is a die-hard Top Chef fan. But does he have the passion?
View Slideshow »John Newman, the chef and owner of Newmans at 988, a French-Italian restaurant in Cannon Beach, Oregon, told us: “I’m here to win it!” He loves “the uncertainty of the show. At any given time, you don’t know what to expect. They could wake you up at 2am and expect you to scramble an egg.” Sounds…fun?
View Slideshow »Barking Frog chef Bobby Moore surveys the scene.
View Slideshow »The cooks queue up for their quizzing.
View Slideshow »Ashley Villaluz, who loves the hands-on nature of a career in cooking, studied at the Seattle Community College Culinary Academy. She’s currently the sous chef of Gourmondo Catering. Her favorite past contestant? Hung Huynh from season 3.
View Slideshow »Bobby Moore seemed confident about his audition.
View Slideshow »View Slideshow »
Pastry chef Peter Serrano didn’t have to go far to audition, he works at Hotel 1000’s restaurant, Boka. Favorite dessert? Any French pastry with hazelnut.
View Slideshow »Overlake Golf and Country Club chef Adam Reece is a naturally competitive person, but he says he learned to work well with others way back in his dishwasher days.
View Slideshow »Randy Pennington, a Bravo casting associate, welcomes the chefs.
View Slideshow »Sutra’s Colin Patterson did a pre-audition handstand to get the blood flowing. “Better than caffeine” he asserted. We took his word for it.
On the morning of March 9, local cooks showed up at Hotel 1000 in downtown Seattle to try out for Bravo’s Top Chef (season 9) and spin-off show Top Chef: Just Desserts, which has only aired for one season so far.
Auditions began at 10am. Among the chefs who auditioned: Diane LaVonne of Diane’s Market Kitchen and Colin Patterson of Sutra.
Neither seemed nervous.
“I’m totally fine,” explained LaVonne. “I bring life experience to the kitchen. I have a maturity that is key to centering oneself. And I’m good on TV,” she added with a smile. Teaching cooking classes for a crowd every week also can’t hurt.
Patterson told us he was feeling “good. Underslept, but good.” That comes with the territory when you’re balancing a restaurant, a yoga studio, and a three-year-old. “I didn’t put my video component together until last night. I wouldn’t even say it’s amateur,” he joked. “It’s preschool style. But I figure they’re more interested in us than our video-editing skills.”
Since cooking wasn’t part of today’s agenda, Bravo requires everyone auditioning to create a video of themselves in the kitchen. “I didn’t realize that there wouldn’t be any cooking, so I brought my entire knife set and recipes,” Roy Buck told us. He’s a South Seattle Community College student and huge Top Chef enthusiast—he even set out for the auditions at 4am. “I wanted to make sure I got in.”
Before auditions were underway, casting director Lisa Bay Adams sat down with Seattle Met to shed some light on the whole ordeal.
When watching at home, most of us don’t know much about the casting process. Can you tell us what you’re looking for in possible contestants?
Passion—culinary passion. Whether the person is classically trained or self-taught, passion is really what we’re looking for. We also need to see that they can express themselves. Talent is incredibly important, but they also need confidence, charisma, playfulness, and a strong sense of themselves. Can they think on their feet? Can they work alongside others? That’s why we’ll be asking quick response questions.
Can you give an example of a question you’ll be asking?
If you were to be on the next season of Top Chef, what would you be remembered for? They have to be able to answer that. We need to see who they are.
What is the strangest thing you can recall from an audition?
We ask everyone who auditions to describe an embarrassing moment they’ve had in the kitchen and I remember one pastry chef who told us that while accepting a prestigious award, she tripped and dropped her whole plate of desserts. That’s not particularly strange, but it’s memorable.
Seattle was number seven in the nine-city casting call. Click on the slideshow to meet some of the contestants who auditioned this morning.
Go Colin!!!!!!