Orthodox ‘Chopped’ Teen Star Will Compete On Guy Fieri’s Cooking Show
Eitan Bernath with his idol, Guy Fieri. Image by Eitan Bernath
An Orthodox teen is competing on a Food Network cooking show — for the second time.
Eitan Bernath, or as he’s known to fans, Chef Eitan, is soon to appear on Guy Fieri’s “Guy’s Grocery Games.” In the show, four chefs cook with ingredients found in the supermarket as Fieri foists unusual challenges upon the competitors. The episode will air on September 24 at 8 p.m. (ET) on the Food Network.
Bernath is just 15 years old, but he already has one nationally televised cooking competition under his belt. When he was just 11 he was part of the first group of kids to compete on “Chopped,” a competition that eventually evolved into “Chopped Junior.”
Although he did not win, he soon became a kosher foodie celebrity of sorts, hired to do food demos and interviewed on radio shows and for other Jewish media. He also started a kosher food blog called “Cook With Chef Eitan.”
Bernath has long been obsessed with Guy Fieri. In 2014, he went to Fieri’s cookbook signing dressed up as Fieri, replete with a blond, spiky wig and the chef’s signature sunglasses. But it wasn’t until two years later, when Fieri published another cookbook and Bernath went to that book signing, that Bernath told Fieri about the “Chopped” episode and his subsequent career. Fieri was impressed, and took Bernath’s business card.
“I was over the moon on the car ride back, rehashing every detail of our whole conversation to my mom,” Bernath wrote on his blog.
Within the hour, he received an email from Fieri’s team, asking him to be on “Guy’s Grocery Games” for their “Superfans” episode. He was then flown out to San Francisco to film the episode with his idol.
“It was seriously the dream of a lifetime,” Bernath wrote. “I am so grateful I had the opportunity to have this incredible experience.”
Michelle Honig is a writer at the Forward. Find her on Instagram and Twitter.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Dive In
-
Food A unique Ethiopian-Israeli cafe in Harlem becomes certified kosher and vegan
-
Culture These matzo ball soup dumplings taught me to stop worrying and enjoy Asian-Jewish fusion food
-
Fast Forward Israel just became the first country to approve the sale of lab-grown beef
-
Culture What New York lost when it lost the Jewish cafeteria
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Secretive GOP firm distorts Democratic candidate’s view on Israel in NJ governor race
-
Fast Forward Trump administration to review nearly $9 billion in Harvard funding over campus antisemitism
-
Yiddish World Yiddish fans in Berlin launch a Yiddish open mic series
-
Fast Forward Cornell pro-Palestinian student leader opts to leave US, as Columbia ‘self-deportee’ makes her case to return
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.