Photo by Mitchell Haaseth/NBC
This
weekend America’s Next Great Restaurant premieres on NBC. Not only will
the winner get a three-restaurant franchise based on their show, but they’ll
have four really impressive backers. The series’ judges, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Curtis Stone, Chipotle found Steve Ells and Latina culinary artist
Lorena Garcia, are also investors in the chosen eatery. In a recent conference
call interview, Flay and Ells talked about advice for contestants, the
importance of problem solving and tasting bad food on TV.
Ells
gave a little background on what makes a successful restaurateur, saying, “The
most important advice is to really convey a sense of what it is that these
folks are getting into, what the restaurant business is really about. That not only does it take a great idea, but
it takes lots of other skills — the ability to build a really strong team that
can execute their vision. It takes a lot of hours, a lot of hard work. It takes
the ability to be able to communicate with customers and vendors and solve
problems.”
To
prove their point to the hopefuls, Ells explained that the challenges were
built around these key issues, “A lot of the different competitions that the
contestants went through really gave us the ability to see if these contestants
have good problem solving skills. Because every day in a restaurant you're thrown all kinds of challenges
that you would never be able to anticipate. So the ability to watch contestants
be able to figure things out under pressure was really great. And so we shared
a lot of our own experiences with them and helped them along the way.”
Flay
was also interested in the contestants’ motivation before he’d be willing to
back their dream establishment. He divulged, “Basically what I wanted to know
from these people first and foremost is why they wanted to do this. Did they
want to do this because they wanted to be on television, which obviously was
not going to work for us? Do they want to do this because this is really a
lifelong dream of theirs? And if so what has caused that? Is it something in
their family in terms of coming up with a great meatball recipe for instance
and wanting to sort of spread that across the country? So for me the real
question is why were you doing this and what is driving you to basically commit
your entire career and the rest of your life to making this work?”
That
said, prospective competitors didn’t need decades of restaurant experience
under their belts to make the final cut. Flay revealed, “You didn't have to be
a food service professional to pitch a concept. You could be a schoolteacher.
It didn't matter. It could be anybody.”
Needless
to say, casting a wide net can sometimes lead to catching some pretty crazy
fish. Flay continued, “We were told… there were some pretty outlandish ideas.
But for the most part we knew that ultimately we needed a good restaurant idea
that would actually work and one that people would understand because otherwise
we'd just be throwing our money out the window.”
And
Flay does mean “our” money. He and his co-judges Ells, Garcia and Stone are
also backing the winning establishment. “As investors the four of us basically
operated on our own volition and then let the TV take place around us… It's
going to be a television show, but basically that's not what we were there for.
We were there to find a really great restaurant idea.”
Of
course at the core of any great restaurant is the food. Flay described his
process, “I start with food first, because I'm a chef by trade, and basically
that's how I spend my time in the restaurant being in my whites in the kitchen. And so of course, food is very important to
me. Now that doesn't mean that I can't see through a dish that somebody is
serving us that may not be perfectly seasoned or have the perfect technique…
These people weren't necessarily chefs. But, every once in a while, there was
something that was just a little bit more difficult to eat than others.
Ells
recalled a particular moment from the ANGR trailer, “I was watching
over, and Bobby was about to take that bite, and I almost reached over to grab
his hand to stop that spoon from going into his mouth. I just I couldn't get
there in time, and we all say it coming, and I'm like, ‘No, don't eat it.’”
Although that recipe will
most likely not be highlighted, Flay said he believed that some culinary
knowledge will be conveyed on the show. “There
are definitely cooking skill tests, and there's definitely things that you'll
learn from watching some of the contestants who do a good job with their food.”
To pick up a tip or two
and watch as the next culinary destination develops tune in to America’s Next Great Restaurant on
Sunday nights at 8 p.m. EST/7 p.m. Central on NBC.
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