Fort Mill student to be featured in Food Network tournament this week

His parents aren’t chefs. He wasn’t locked in a back kitchen until he could slice and souffle. But listen to Ryan Gonzalez for a few minutes, and it’s clear why television executives would pick him for the spotlight.

Gonzalez loves his food, and he sure can make it.

“Each one’s another memory,” Gonzalez, 12, said of the sharp reminders imprinted on his hands of just how tricky cooking can be. “That one’s from cutting a cabbage. That one’s from cutting a pepper.”

Gonzalez was chosen to compete in the “Chopped Junior: Make Me a Judge” tournament on Food Network. His episode, the second of four, airs at 8 p.m. March 15. The show has a barbecue theme, with contestants working with different sauces in each round. Ingredients include cookies, vegetables and a cheese dessert.

Host Ted Allen joins judges Maneet Chauhan, Alex Guarnaschelli and Chris Santos on the show. A winner from each episode gets $10,000 and will join Allen as judges when house stars and world class chefs compete on “Chopped.”

Gonzalez isn’t allowed to say how his episode went prior to airing, but he can recall how he felt about it.

“If you see me on the show I look calm,” the Fort Mill resident said. “Inside I was just insane.”

Food is his passion, but Gonzalez plays lacrosse and other sports. The elimination format wasn’t too strange, even if cooking generally isn’t so competitive in his experience.

“It was just another different type of tournament,” Gonzalez said.

His mom manages the office at a driving school, and his dad works at a financial company while attending law school. But they’re a foodie family at heart. From traveling throughout the Charlotte metro and having a favorite restaurant or two in each area, to Gonzalez using Google to translate so he can order dishes in their native language.

“Our family’s favorite hobby is literally eating,” said mom Corey Horton Gonzalez.

It would take a few Google searches to get much information on Gonzalez’s favorite dishes. Not that he doesn’t share them eagerly. They just aren’t foods most people around here would have heard of all at once. He isn’t a chicken nuggets and fries type of guy.

“He never ordered off the kid menu,” Horton Gonzalez said.

The family has “always been kind of big on table etiquette,” she said, which meant her son learning to use a knife early, and properly. Now he may make a full dinner a time or three a week depending on school and practice schedules. Gonzalez fuses Puerto Rican and Lebanese flavors with typical American ones.

“I like to cook Lebanese food because it’s always just got a nice little spice to it,” he said. “It’s always got nice meats, and even their vegetable platters are delicious.”

Because the Banks Trail Middle School student isn’t the latest generation in a family of chefs, wasn’t engineered to spend every waking hour in the kitchen, he has gotten some help on his route to a national television audience. He took classes at Bakers Buzzin near Tega Cay, which offers cooking classes and camps for kids. Staff at Tega Cay Deli gave him a crash course in deconstructing a chicken, one of many items contestants needed to know before competing.

When the show airs, the family will be in a familiar place — at a restaurant. They reserved a room for about 70 at Towne Tavern in Fort Mill.

The show appearance is special for all sorts of reasons for the Gonzalez family. He learned to cook with his mom and her dad, the original family foodie. Gonzalez’s grandfather died last May. Not long before Gonzalez was chosen to compete, which the family doesn’t see as coincidence.

“He loved to cook good food,” Horton Gonzalez said of her father. “He loved to eat good food. He loved to talk about good food.”

Proving it doesn’t take chef training or a restaurant lease for great food to run in the family.

This story was originally published March 14, 2017 at 8:05 AM with the headline "Fort Mill student to be featured in Food Network tournament this week."