And just before the sun set on another Utah desert day, I got the call. I was going to be a contestant on a cooking TV show. I let my supervisor know I would have to hightail it 3 days early from the rare plant surveys I was doing at Goblin Valley State Park to Laguardia airport in New York. They had a flight ready for me to get down to Atlanta for filming. Before I get to the experience of being on a big budget cooking TV show, let me back it up a tad to let you know the full scoop of my journey.
I was thrust from St. Lawrence University in March of 2020. We all know that story of the seniors missing out on their final months of college. Old news, we’re past that. This story is about the New York Native who was thrust from college, became a mildly famous Tik-Tok star, moved to Las Vegas to become a seasonal botanist, and then got cast on a obscure cooking show. I suppose the story starts at SLU, where I learned how to cook living in the SLU Greenhouse. Cooking in the Greenhouse is already a lot like being a contestant of a cooking game show. Every night, two students in the Greenhouse are tasked with cooking for up to 20 students. When they start cooking, they do not know what ingredients they have, they always have limited time because…. College, and the kicker is that sometimes you are thrown the extra challenge of having to make everything vegan, gluten free, nut free, and even the off-hand shellfish allergy comes into play! Given this cooking game show-esque experience, I felt a bit of a tingle when on my Instagram feed I saw a casting call for a cooking show. I sent in my application and a week or so later I got an email requesting an interview. Cool, ok wow this is happening.
They gave me some questions to prepare for the interview and a date and time to zoom. The day of the zoom came, I answered the video call to a warm and enthusiastic woman who started asking me questions about my cooking background, what I like to cook, etc… I tried to be as relaxed and as charismatic as possible so I took the interview and turned it into a stand-up routine (I do not consider myself anything more than a cartoon character and I can live with that). She tells me she likes me, and that she would like me to send some pictures of my food to her. Ooof. I simply have no pictures of my cooking plated nicely. “I will have those to you by the end of the week!”
Chapter 2: Impromptu dinner party! I invited all my friends (2 + 1 of their roommates) to a grand 5 course dinner. I prepare the finest pastas, focaccia, spiced pears, Pasta fagioli soup, all for the camera. The pictures look amazing, my guests are #stuffed. Let’s go. Sent in the photos, and then I got an email saying something along the lines of “awesome, we’ll be in touch!”. It was March.
Chapter 3: Waiting. March passed, April passed, and most of May passed. It was around May 15th when I was thinking to myself “This may not work”. You see, I had another job I had signed a contract for that was to start on June 17th in New Hampshire. If they haven’t called me yet, how could this move fast enough for me to work in that position and do this show? Then, out in the desert around the 25th I got the call. And I had to get back to New York for a flight. Fast. So, I jumped in my Kia spectra that my neighbor sold to me 2 days prior on May 28th, loaded it with all my belongings and drove from Las Vegas to New York in 2.5 days (pretty impressive if you ask me). In Fact, I turned 23 going 80 mph somewhere in Ohio on May 31st and I treated myself by listening to my favorite moth stories on Spotify and allowing myself to sob (feels great).
Getting sidetracked
Chapter 4: The show. You will notice I am going a bit shorter on this portion of the story specifically because I signed like…. A 200-page agreement from the tv show about confidentiality and other stuff (weird), and like, obviously I didn’t read that, so I’m not sure what I can’t say. Anyway, I got down to Atlanta and was brought from the airport to a hotel room. I was to stay in the hotel room for 10 days straight. It was a Covid precaution. During those 10 days I ended up walking 66 miles in circles around the hotel room (according to apple health app). Cool time had at least 7 breakdowns which is a bit higher than usual for any 10-day period, but nothing too out of the ordinary. And then, it was showtime. I had to get my outfit OK’d by the producers the night before (via text photos) and then at 5:30 AM it was time. We were whisked away to the filming studio and taken through a series of tasks as a 6-person cohort. We were always instructed not to talk to each other, and we had truly little sense of what was happening the whole time. I told myself the entire day to just keep swimming and moving along, but it was hard. They had taken our phones from us before the show started, so I really did not know what time it was all day. It was a long and strange fever dream of some cooking, some interviews, bantering, being cute for the camera, and drinking coffee. After the day was done, we were finally given back our phones, and sent back to the hotel room. It was 11 pm then. What was to be a 1-hour episode of television took over 16 hours on set to make. Woof.
Chapter 5: After it all. After it all I was finally able to talk to all my fellow cast members in the courtyard of a Marriott hotel. I ended up getting to bed so late that evening. The next day came quickly, and just like that it was all over! I was taken back to the airport, and sent back to New York, where I would drive up to New Hampshire the next day to begin another job. Fast forward almost a full year later, and I am on TV! It’s super fun to see how they edited the full filming day to make a cohesive narrative. I hope you enjoyed this strange chapter of my life!
Peace, Love, and Veggies
Nick Filannino
Class of 2020