June 1, 2010, by
Three years ago, one of the more memorable "Hell's Kitchen" contestants was our very own former Waffle House cook Julia Williams, who tearfully fought her way to fourth place despite a clear lack of experience but mounds of moxie. (If anybody knows what she's up to, please email me at rho@ajc.com. I'd love to talk to her and get an update.)
Could Suwanee-based private chef Jason Ellis take on Gordon Ramsay and go even further?
Based on a preview of the first episode which airs tonight, it’s too early to say, but he is not one of the weaker players.
“I’m not afraid to challenge myself,” said, Ellis, 38, explaining why he tried out for the show in an interview last month. “Imagine what you can learn no matter how hard he is on you, no matter how hard he pushes your buttons and cusses.You can prove yourself. I’ve been to hell and back. If you can run Hell’s Kitchen, you can run anything!”
He went to culinary school in Berlin and cooked in the military in Germany. He used to own a restaurant in South Carolina. After 9/11, he and his wife came to Atlanta to work for a hotel company. He has since worked as an executive chef at a variety of local hotels including a Marriott, a Doubletree Suites and a Hilton Garden Inn. Most recently he worked at 300 Atlanta, a high-end bowling alley. That's where he hooked up with music artists and entertainers and began working as a private chef.
Clients, he said, include Falcons players Chauncey Davis and Jonathan Babineaux and music producers Jermaine Dupri and Jazze Pha.
Ellis, who is married with four kids, likens “Hell’s Kitchen” to basic training. “You never know when you’re going to wake up. You expect the worst. I was a nervous wreck,” he said.
He figures the show’s casting directors liked him because he was big, outspoken and unwilling to sugarcoat anything. “I was totally myself,” he said. “I loved it!”
As for Ramsay, he said he was as tough as Ellis expected. “I wanted to punch him out!” he said. “I felt like tearing the place apart, being arrested and feeling okay with it.” What held him back? “The thought of jail time.”
He admires Ramsay and considers himself a tough cookie in the kitchen, too. “I’m totally serious” during service, he said. “I do not play. Stupidity irritates me. The show makes me even more serious before a plate goes out that it’s perfect. 99 percent won’t do.”
Check out his Twitter page at www.twitter.com/thechefatl
TV TONIGHT
“Hell’s Kitchen,” 8 p.m. Tuesdays on Fox
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