by Gina Scarpa

It turns out that making a barbecue meal in Texas is a lot harder than it sounds. After a full night of cooking on an open pit on last night's Top Chef, Chris C's team found themselves in the bottom group and he took the fall after Tom called the rub for the meats "almost inedible". Today, we talked to Chris to learn more about his culinary experiences, who he felt was the strongest in the competition, and let him subtly make a ploy to win fan favorite!

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: Tell us a little about your cooking background prior to Top Chef.
A. Chris: I started off fairly young, and definitely fell in love with cooking at an early age. I took Home Ec in high school and to make a long story short, I went to Johnson & Wales in Virginia. I did two years in Rhode Island and bounced around from Key West to San Diego to LA. It's been quite a journey for me, gaining experiences and learning along the way.

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: Were you a fan of Top Chef? What made you decide to try out?
A. Chris: Yeah, I'm a huge fan of the show. It's one of those things that you never think that you're good enough to make it. I wanted to prove to myself that I was as good as I thought I was and that I could compete. I didn't actually think I was going to make it on. I was like, "Okay, this is awesome. How far can I make it to this process?"

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: Who stood out to you as your biggest competition or someone who impressed you?
A. Chris: From the beginning, I think Paul really stood out to me. I was calling him the ninja assassin of the group because he was so quiet and laid back. He would put up this food that was like, "Wow!"

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: That barbecue challenge this week seemed a lot hard than it initially sounded. Did you have experience cooking like that?
A. Chris: No, I don't think any of us had ever cooked on an open pit like that before. I do barbecue and southern food a lot but nothing where it has to cook for that long over an open flame.

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: You said on last night's episode that you basically turned around and teams had been formed. Would you rather have drawn knives?
A. Chris: I probably would've preferred to draw knives. That way, there's no animosity and it's the luck of the draw. It's not like, "I'm gonna go be with my best friend." Thinking about it, I should've been more proactive and grabbed the people I wanted to be with.

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: You took some flack for your rub. Tom said it was so salty, it was almost inedible, which was kind of rough. Looking back on it, what are your thoughts?
A. Chris: Yeah! Tom was cranky pants! I think he was up all night too. You know, I guess we just didn't know how intense it would become on the grill, smoking for 10-12 hours. Not having that experience... and we were going for bold, intense flavor. I think that was the big issue.

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: Did you get to make a dish this season and was there a challenge that really highlighted what you can do as a chef?
A. Chris: Yeah, I really liked the modernist cuisine challenge. That's more my style and I wish Beverly wouldn't have taken up all the time by spraying her curry foam all over Padma. I feel like they just jumped over my dish and there was so much to it. I said to Lindsay before it happened... I said, "She doesn't have the tip on the foamer. This is not going to be good."

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: What do you want to do from here?
A. Chris: Ooh, there's a $125,000 question. I really learned a lot about myself and what it takes to be a great chef. I just made a lot of great friends, people I'm going to be friends with for the rest of my life. That's worth the price of admission and what's next? Who knows? There's so many opportunities now and the competition really opens a lot of doors. I would love to find that special person to open a restaurant with or that special person to date at this point. I definitely wanna get into my own restaurant.


Top Chef: Texas airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on Bravo.

(Image courtesy of Bravo)

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