SE Michigan Chef $16K Winner On ‘Guy’s Grocery Games’

ROCHESTER, MI — A sous chef at Chapman House in Rochester came home a winner after completing a wacky set of challenges in “Guy’s Grocery Games,” a show on the Food Network that pits four chefs against one another in a series of cooking challenges using ingredients found on grocery store shelves. Chad Barrett, 29,of Royal Oak, collected $16,000 in winnings in the show that aired Sunday night. It was filmed last year.

Contestants on the show, hosted by celebrity chef Guy Fieri, shop for their ingredients in Flavortown Market, a real supermarket stocked with 20,000 items, but built as a set for the popular program. Barrett competed in an episode titled “Budget Bonanza,” in which the chefs were given $60 to shop with to prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner for four.

Barrett won the championship in the breakfast challenge.

“It was amazing to win,” Barrett told The Detroit News. “Really one of the best feelings in the world to compete against three amazing chefs from across the country. Watching it with my family and seeing how proud everyone was of me really made the whole experience come to reality.”

Barrett works at one of Metro Detroit’s hottest new restaurants. Chapman House was one of 10 finalists in the Detroit Free Press 2017 Best New Restaurant award. According to its website, the restaurant offers “Modern American dining inspired by French culinary tradition.”

Barrett got his first restaurant job as a dishwasher when he was 14 at a country club where his mother worked, he told The Oakland Press. A single mother, she worked two jobs, and working at the country club meant he didn’t have to have a babysitter. In the bustling kitchen, he discovered his calling.

“I picked up a knife and said, ‘OK, I like this.’ It’s the creativity, the feeling of being on the line, in the trenches with everybody next to you and you work as a team to get everything done,” said Barrett, who eventually wants to go into restaurant consulting and help new restaurants launch, as well as help develop menus.

Barrett has long been a fan of the “Guy’s Grocery Games,” and told The Oakland Press Fieri was “awesome — normal as code be, just hanging out with us before we started.”
“It was amazing to finally meet someone I watched on TV for so many years,” Barrett told The Detroit News. “The show was a huge highlight of a tough year for me and my family.”

Photo by Sarah Sphar via Flickr Commons