The Twin Cities got a profile boost during the last season of "Top Chef," with a local competitor (Justin Sutherland) and two of our superstar chefs making appearances as coaches (Gavin Kaysen, J.D. Fratzke).
Add Sameh Wadi to the list of local culinary celebs making their way to the TV franchise.
The chef and co-owner of World Street Kitchen and Milkjam Creamery in Minneapolis, and Grand Catch in St. Paul, appeared last month on "Top Chef Middle East."
It wasn't Wadi's first television outing. He competed on the Food Network's "Iron Chef" in 2010 — "when I was a kid," he said.
But this time, Wadi wasn't doing the cooking. Instead, the Palestinian-American chef flew to Lebanon for a full day of judging the contestants on their interpretations of street food.
Because the program airs on a Middle Eastern network, many Americans are not able to see Wadi's episode. So, we got the skinny on just what happened that day in the mountains of Lebanon. Wadi also dished about regional differences within Middle Eastern cuisine, and the worst food he ever tasted.
Q: Many Americans might not know about "Top Chef Middle East." How does the show compare to the American version?
A: It's a very similar concept, but it utilizes chefs from all over the Middle East, northeast and North Africa as contestants. Moroccan chefs, Algerian chefs, chefs from the Gulf area, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Palestine. It's all Arab-speaking countries. It's filmed in Lebanon and I believe it's the third season.
Q: Are the episodes the same format?
A: It's exactly the same layout. They have a "Quickfire Challenge" and they have the main challenge for the day. Somebody gets sent home at the end of it, and somebody wins.
Q: What was your episode about?
A: The theme was street food. It took place in a remote mountaintop village in Lebanon. The whole country, you can drive from the southern tip to the north in about two hours. To get to this location, we drove from the center of Beirut into the mountains for 1 ½ to two hours, to give you an idea of how far up the mountain is. It was a pretty cool setting, and the neighborhood we shot the episode in, it's an old-time neighborhood that has not really changed and has their own style of food and stalls.
Q: What were the challenges?
A: In this case, the whole theme of the day revolved around food and childhood, or memory and connecting to something that you miss. Every contestant had family members or really good friends there, and they asked them to make a dish inspired by the other person. For example, this guy's buddy flies in from the U.S. They used to cook this dish together when they were in college in the U.S., so they had 45 minutes to re-create that dish.
Q: How was it?
A: This guy's dish was one of the worst dishes I've ever tasted in my life. It was just so bland. It had no flavor, no depth, no seasoning. I said that on TV. It was not something I associate with Middle Eastern flavor. It was a college dish.
Q: Harsh! What was it?
A: It was a specialty from Saudi Arabia. It's typically rice cooked in chicken broth until it comes together and mushes, slow cooked. And then they garnish with some sort of a hot sauce. It's not supposed to have a lot of flavor, but it's supposed to have the flavor of chicken come through. To turn it into street food, he turned it into a croquette and put fried onions that were acrid and bitter and not delicious, and then cucumber yogurt sauce that made no sense and was not traditional in that regard. He missed on all the marks. Bland on bland on bland on bland. He did get eliminated.
Q: What feedback did you give him?
A: I said, truly, even some sort of seasoning would not have made this as bad. Even salt. Lemon juice. Something.
Q: You seem like a tough judge!
A: No. I'm a terrible judge because I can't hide my emotions.
Q: Did you try anything you liked?
A: My favorite dish ended up winning. It was essentially a Gulf-spiced fish taco with bread. I'm using the term taco loosely. She made a flatbread and you ate it like a taco. It had a tamarind chutney, hot sauce, and the fish was super delicious. I crave it to this day.
Q: Do you want to do more TV?
A: Definitely. I am always really happy to represent Palestinian chefs out there in the world, especially in the Middle Eastern realm. To see more Middle Eastern chefs go outside the comfort zone of traditional food and do things that are a little more interesting. I love that and want to support that. And for me, it's a way to continue my education of Middle Eastern food and the different ways to make it, the different ways people from the Gulf spice versus people from the Levant or North Africa. Each subgroup of Middle Eastern folk have a different way of cooking and a different power that they put into their food.
Q: For such a huge area, the Middle East, there must be so many differences in cooking.
A: Talking about a culture with nomadic people, you tell a story of your ancestors via your food. Somebody can be making a traditional dish you find in other countries, and it's the same dish, but each one tastes different.
For example, kofta meatballs. If you eat it from somebody in the Gulf, it may have a little bit heavier spices, more of an Indian tinge to it, because food is more influenced by that region. If you're in the Levant, that's typically less spiced and will have heavier, fresh herbs — parsley, cilantro, onions. Maybe darker spices — allspice, clove, black pepper or cardamom. The same dish in North Africa, it has smoked paprika, it has saffron, it has cumin, it has heavier acid. You take it one area outside, and it keeps continuing to build and change.
It's no different than here, talking about the way people prepare pizza in the United States. Each region does its own thing.
