CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — After competing in the World Food Championships this year, a Port Aransas Chef was casted on the Food Network.
Chef Gail Huesmann competed for $10,000 on the show “Supermarket Stakeout”.
“The premise of supermarket stake out is that there are four chefs out in the parking lot and they are each given $500 each and they have to go through basically 3 rounds of cooking,” said Chef Gail Huesmann.
“In the first round you just go buy groceries off of somebody and hope to god that you have something useful in the cart, so Alex Guarnaschelli says ‘Asian Fusion.”
“You have 45 minutes to shop, figure out what you’re making, making it plate it and present it.”
“I see this lady she’s got nice and healthy full bags and so I give her a hundred dollars and I go racing back.”
“I start looking in these bags and see 5 bags that were filled with nothing but cookies, I had to go back.”
“I can be an amazing chef and I can cook asian fusion with just about anything, but I can’t do it just with cookies.”
“Then this lady comes out and she’s got this big healthy cart, I use Tuscan kale and so I did the kale and the shard I took the spaghetti and cooked that and used that like asian noodles.”
“Voila, Italian asian fusion.”
“The second round you can look in the bags and see what they have in the groceries but you can only buy from one shopper.”
“The next round is crunch.”
“Finally this lady comes out, she doesn’t have a whole lot in her bag, I start looking through there and I’m like I can make something with this I can make this work.”
“But she says ‘I’m going to make this for my husband and his birthday dinner these are all of his favorite things.”
“I told her I can give you $90 for the $60 you just spent and I’ve got my pouty face on.”
“So I decide that I’m going to do shoe string potatoes, fry those so they’re crunchy and make a beer batter, do onion rings, and string beans and there’s lamb chops.”
“Lisa and I made it through the second round so now its just the two of us.”
“In the final round you can only buy 5 ingredients so I need something that will melt.”
“This guy has bread so I think awesome, I’m going to make a grilled cheese sandwich, that’s melty.”
“Time is ticking.”
“The judges came and they tasted everything and the winner is Gail Heussman.”
“I was trying to keep a poker face and everything else and be like cool but then BAM.”
“They brought back out all of my pecan sandies and I threw them at the crowd.”
“There’s not a lot of notoriety for the coastal bend, but there ought to be.”
“There are eight plus world top food championship top ten finishers in the Corpus Christi area.”
“We make an assumption about what’s here without really considering the possibilities of what’s right infront of us and that’s exactly what I did with the ingredients in my basket.”
“I could have made an assumption and said I can’t make anything with this or I could have considered the possibilities and made it an award winning dish which is what I did.”
Chef Gail did walk away with a grand prize of $10,000.
If you’d like to try her cooking for yourself she’s the head chef at the Black Marlin Grill Restaurant out in Port Aransas.
