By NewsLine Staff
mail@floridannewsline.com
In what can only be described as a “come from behind victory,” Alhambra Theatre & Dining Executive Chef DeJuan Roy emerged the winner in a special Father’s Day episode of the Food Network’s Guy Fieri’s Grocery Games. The competition aired June 19.
During the show Fieri sends four talented chefs running through the aisles in a high-stakes, high-skills, grocery store cooking competition. The chefs are hit by real-world challenges like finding workarounds when all the essential ingredients are suddenly out-of-stock or having to create a masterpiece when you can only cook with five items or less or on a $10 budget. In the end, the food does the talking, as the last chef standing can make some serious dough.
Chef Roy made it through to the final round, pitted one-on-one against a corporate chef from Boston. Each chef was given one main ingredient with the task of creating a Father’s Day dinner of which their family would be proud. The Boston chef was given duck breast, from which he made a classic Duck la’Orange. Roy was given canned ham.
Roy said, “He gets duck and I get canned ham? I’ve got to be creative.” And creative he was. Roy deep fried the ham in a seasoned flour and then covered it in a Dijon mustard glaze. He accompanied it with fingerling potatoes simply seasoned with salt, pepper and fresh rosemary. He added Swiss chard sautéed with salt, pepper and garlic and deglazed with white wine and vinegar.
While judges raved about the duck, it was Chef Roy who emerged the winner.
Fieri said, “DeJuan, you just made canned ham sexy.”
Roy won $16,000 in cash and said, “I just wanted to show my kids that they can go on and do great things.”
Chef DeJuan Roy joined the Alhambra Theatre & Dining staff in the fall of 2012, completely revamping the culinary experience at the nation’s longest running dinner theater.
Photo courtesy Mark D. Berman
Chef DeJuan Roy with Craig Smith, managing partner of the Alhambra
