Hatboro Resident, Chef Dishes on 'Hell's Kitchen'

Chino Chang has lived “that sense of urgency” and “panic” that comes with cooking in restaurant kitchens for half of his life.

But, Chang, 39, of Hatboro, a contestant on the ninth season of “Hell’s Kitchen,” wasn’t ready for another ingredient in the hotly-contested cooking competition.

“You’re not prepared to be yelled at and screamed at,” Chang said, while phoning from a break at Redstone American Grill in Marlton, N.J., where he works as executive chef. “If you play it off like it doesn’t bother you, you come across as not being passionate. You can’t do that.”

Instead, Chang, who was nominated for elimination following the series premiere on July 18, escaped being cut by showing a bit of humility. Putting his head down and saying, “yes, chef” to Gordon Ramsay helped Chang stay at least one more round in the competition, which continues tonight on Fox at 8 p.m.

“I spoke up and I didn’t blame anybody. Everybody screws up,” said Chang, who moved to Hatboro five years ago from previous homes in North Jersey and New York. “I said, ‘you know, I wasn’t prepared … I think he liked my honesty." 

Although the show’s filming has wrapped, Chang is tight-lipped about the outcome, or which chef ended up landing the coveted job at BLT Steak in New York.

Going into the competition – which he auditioned for on happenstance - Chang said he didn’t really set a high goal. The experience alone was enough. 

“I just decided to stop in. It was my day off,” he said of his luck in passing by the audition locale. “That’s how I am personally. I like to be spontaneous about things.”

That spontaneity leading up to his days in the kitchen came early on. At just 12 or 13 years old, Chang worked in his father’s fish store in Philadelphia filleting and scaling fish.

“If you can scale a fish and fillet a fish, that’s good stuff,” Chang said, adding that, at the time, he hated the work. “He paid me 20 bucks for the whole day.”

From there, he moved up to cooking his first dish – Asian style sticky rice – from start to finish.

“There’s an art to rice,” he said. “You don’t just put it in water and cook it.”

And as much as Chang enjoys preparing a good meal, he also appreciates being able to sit back, relax and enjoy the fruits of another chef’s labor. in Willow Grove ranks high on his list of favorite restaurants.

on York Road in Hatboro is another he rattles off. And, breakfasts in Hatboro seem to go hand-in-hand with the iconic , another favorite of Chang’s. 

While the chefs at these eateries likely have not had to endure the screaming and yelling that is customary for “Hell’s Kitchen” contestants, Chang takes solace in knowing that regardless of how many dishes he “screwed up,” or how much apologizing he had to do to Ramsay because of it, at the end of the day, “I got to cook his food.”