Did You Watch This MN Chef On ‘Guys Grocery Games’ Last Week?

I missed out on this Minnesota chef experience this week on the popular Food Network show, Guy's Grocery Games. The chef behind Smack Shack Twin Cities, Chef Josh Thoma was a contestant on Guy's Grocery Games, here's a recap of how he did on the cooking show.

The premise from Food Network for this episode reads:

Guy Fieri invites four of his favorite Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives seafood chefs to make some waves in Flavortown Market. First, they must make a regional dish using the fish they catch in their fly-fishing net, plus any other ingredients they can cram into the net in a single shop. Then, Guy invites his DDD chefs to prepare a seafood spectacular, but instead of digging for clams, they must dig in the sand for canned seafood to use in a fresh shellfish dish. The chef who sails through both challenges will get to search the store for hidden treasures worth up to $20,000

The Smack Shack Twin Cities was pretty hyped about the appearance for Chef Thoma.

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Josh was competing against 3 other chefs on Guy's Grocery Games and the first round was about fish. The chefs that Josh was competing against were:

Tony Minadakis (Jimmy’s Famous Seafood chef/owner in Baltimore)
Hallock Howard (Amos Mosquito’s chef/owner in Atlantic Beach, NC)
Darren Chadderdon (The Rawbar chef/owner in Chico, CA)

The first challenge was called Catch of the Day, which saw the contestants shopping with a fishing net and catching the main ingredient. Here is what each chef made:

Hallock: Fish & grits + Parmesan-crusted halibut, bacon sauce & cheddar-Parmesan grits
Tony: Pan-seared rockfish + crab-garlic butter over a sauteed vegetable blend
Josh: Grilled ahi tuna + potato puree/fennel salad over Sungold tomato vinaigrette
Darren: Pan-roasted salmon over Japanese-inspired succotash + crab butter, tempura zucchini & crispy tempura zucchini 

Tony was eliminated after this round.

The next round saw the remaining chefs having to pick a can out of the sand to determine what would be their mandatory ingredient. Chef Thoma got Smoked Oysters. Here is how the other chefs fared.

Hallock: Tiny shrimp
Darren: Canned squid

Knowing their mandatory ingredient, the remaining chefs cooked up their final meals to be judged. Chef Thoma created Smoked cioppino + lobster, scallops, shrimp, oysters & grilled bread with/ saffron rouille which was good enough for 2nd place. 

Winning the episode was Hallock Howard who creates an upscale low country boil.

In third place was chef Darren Chadderdon who created a Thoma Ka Thai steamer + a lobster thermidor. 

You'll need a MAX account to watch the episode, as I couldn't find a free-to-stream episode at this point.