An interesting article:
For Reading native, 'Hell's Kitchen' is hotAndrea Heinly has gone from the frying pan into the fire. Happily.
The 30-year-old line cook who grew up in Reading is a contestant on this season's "Hell's Kitchen," the reality/game show where foul-mouthed celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay excoriates contestants to their highest level of excellence. Or he dumps them.
This season begins on Thursday at 9 p.m. on Fox with a prize as a head chef at a restaurant in the Borgata Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City at stake.
If Heinly wins, it will be a homecoming of sorts for the chef who lived in Reading off and on during her youth, before attending the Culinary Institute of America in her 20s.
"I was born in Reading and moved away when I was 3," she said. "I grew up mostly on the West Coast but came back here for some elementary school and then sixth and seventh grades. I moved back to Reading in my early 20s and then decided to go to school (CIA) in New York. All of my family is here."
Heinly, who recently moved back to Reading again, to be with her family during the show's run, said she'll be watching the premier with a group of 30 or so friends and family at Mountain Springs Bar and Restaurant where both her mother and grandmother used to cook.
It was her grandmother, Jean Dengler, who inspired her to switch careers from real estate to cooking.
"My grandmother passed away when I was in my early 20s," she said. "I had been in real estate and decided to do a complete career change and go to culinary school. It was pretty much to not only fulfill my dream, but also my grandmother's dream that I learn to cook."
Heinly said that, at the time, she had no plan beyond learning to cook.
"I didn't want to own my own restaurant," she said. "My grandmother was a cook all over the place at Mom Chaffee's and Mountain Springs, too."
Because her grandmother died when Heinly was still rather young, she decided that cooking was a way to honor the memory and possibly have a new career.
"I felt like I didn't really have the opportunity to learn from her, so I wanted to fill that hole," she said. "I felt very compelled to go and fulfill her legacy. I was miserable with my life. I found real estate very stressful."
That stress probably helped her deal with the stress of cooking in Gordon Ramsay's kitchen, though. Even the selection process was rigorous.
Heinly estimated that she was one of 36,000 applicants who wanted one of the coveted 16 spots on the show.
"I just did a cold call to the talent agency," said Heinly, who had been working as a cook for six years. "It was like they put me under a stress interview. They wanted to see if they could push my buttons - and they did."
The next hurdle was to do an on-camera interview.
"They did that and got me going again," Heinly said.
After much waiting and more interviewing, Heinly found out that she had been selected for the show.
"And my first thought was, 'Is anyone going to hire me again after I've been on this show?' " she said. "But then I was on the show making my signature dish."
Heinly's signature dish is a Korean-influenced pear kimchee with sesame rice and a bulgogi made from steak.
"I cook it all the time for my family," she said. "But when I make the bulgogi at home I'll marinate it (for several days). With a 45 minute time period to prepare the signature dish, I was a little scared."
Heinly said she watched the show beginning in Season 2, and knew what she was in for with the temperamental Ramsay.
"I was in culinary school and I thought, who in their right mind would ever want to go on this show," she said. "And then someone suggested that I should try out, but I didn't think my skills were there."
Eventually though, she figured it couldn't hurt to at least make the call.
The show, which wrapped filming a year ago, was even more intense than she had seen on television.
"Without a doubt," she said, of the continual craziness. "I cannot even tell you how stressful it is being there and how little sleep we get."
Heinly hasn't seen any of the show either, when the hours and hours of taping and cooking and performing challenges gets edited into a story told in one-hour segments. She assumes though, that some of her own personal craziness will make it to the small screen.
"You could call me a spitfire," she said. "I definitely have a habit of speaking my mind."
Heinly isn't at liberty to say how far she gets in the show, but in whatever time she was there, she got to know Gordon Ramsay.
"What you see on television is really true," she said. "In the kitchen he's a maniac, with veins and wrinkles that you wonder how they got there. But outside the kitchen he's a big teddy bear who seems fun loving and relaxed and loves to enjoy life. But really, he's a very intense individual."
Link to the article: http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=122791
