Episode 012- Top Chef cheftestant, Gerald Sombright is a regular guy who made his bones in the professional cooking world, not by flashing a degree from a fancy culinary school.  Instead, he worked his way up from the bottom rung of the kitchen hierarchy.

On this episode, he takes us on his food journey, working his way up from restaurant work in Saint Louis to being Chef De Cuisine at Ario in Marco Island, Florida to being a  contestant on what is arguably the best cooking competition show on television, Top Chef.

He’ll give you the inside scoop on what it’s like to be on the show and how he almost didn’t make it past the application phase, but for his Indiana Jones-like determination.  You’ll also find out his biggest challenge and what he would do differently if he were to do the show again.  Note: The Top Chef Season 14 finale is on Thursday, March 2nd.

Also, if you listened to Episode 011 of Guys and Food, you know that I was on a  pie kick during the last week (Psssst– I still am).  It had me looking at some of my pie cookbooks.  I was intrigued by a few different recipes for maple pie.  Many of these recipes call for the darker and robust tasting Grade B maple syrup. When I asked the folks on one of my Facebook food groups where one might be able to locally source the harder to find Grade B syrup, I was told that the ABC grading system for maple syrup no longer exists.  Just like everyone gets a trophy these days, so too, all maple syrup is now Grade A.  Here is an article explaining the new grading system and how to distinguish one type of maple syrup from another.

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