If you don’t already know who Chef Uri Elbaum is, you are about to.
Famous in the kosher community for being the executive chef for a group that owns four restaurants in the Deal (NJ) area, Elbaum is making the jump from social media sensation to national television personality as he was one of the competitors on the current season of Hell’s Kitchen on Fox.
Elbaum’s restaurants (The Butcher’s Steakhouse, Primavera, Smash, Abu-Laffa) are favorites in the Deal area, but he is also known online for his funny kitchen videos, some of which have been viewed tens of millions of times across various platforms. It was those videos that drew the attention of the people at Hell’s Kitchen and how he ended up on the show.
Taking a wider glance at how he got to where he is today, Elbaum grew up in a Chabad yeshiva in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He credits the intense learning schedule with preparing him for the hard work that he would later demonstrate while working on his culinary craft. In his few hours of spare time, he worked at the counter of a pizza place. One day, the pizza guy didn’t show up and Elbaum seized the opportunity. He never looked back from there.
At the age of 18, he knew he wanted to be a chef, but he didn’t think that he was in the right place.
“South America wasn’t the place for me,” Elbaum said about his early life. “I heard that in America you can make it if you’re persistent.”
With that in mind, Elbaum did something that many people would think of as crazy. He sold his only possession of value (his iPhone), and used the money to fly to Miami. He spoke no English, had no friends or contacts, and had no plan. He had a backpack, $50 cash, and a dream.
“I found myself sleeping on a park bench for a few nights. It was a low moment and it was scary, I’m not going to lie,” said Elbaum with what sounded like happiness in his voice. “But I remember that night looking up at the sky and smiling. I hadn’t had a single bite to eat in two days. But I knew that this was part of the dream. And I’m glad I did it. If I could do everything over again, I’d go back and sleep in that park.”
Elbaum bounced around Miami for a while trying to make it work. His biggest problem was that nobody wanted to hire a chef in America who didn’t speak English. Eventually, he found a place and offered to work for free to prove himself. In just a few days he was promoted to head chef of his first restaurant.
With no experience running a kitchen, Elbaum had to figure a lot of things out on the fly. But, to be fair, that’s something he had always done. He never had the money to go to culinary school and had learned everything he knew on the job, something he thinks of as an advantage. Elbaum believes he has an extra layer of creativity and ownership over his skills because he nurtured them himself.
From there, as they say, the rest is history. Less than a decade later, Elbaum is now 28 and living his dream. He may not be as observant as he was at the start of his journey, but he still has a profound attachment to Judaism and is happy to work exclusively in the kosher world as a chef in many capacities (restaurants, Pesach programs, private events).
“It’s a beautiful thing for me that I can make food for my people in kosher restaurants,” Elbaum said about his current place in life. “What’s the first thing a Jew does before he eats? Makes a bracha. What’s the last thing he does before he leaves? Makes a bracha. Having people say a bracha on my food is a great feeling.”
But there are plenty of people that get to be head chefs at a restaurant (or four). Very few people get selected to make it to the big stage and perform their craft live on television, especially on a show as famous as Hell’s Kitchen.
“There are three things that it really took to do this,” said Elbaum about the process that brought him here. “The first is hard work. I work 18-20 hours a day. The second is believing. Having that emunah in your work and in G-d that everything will develop. And the third is staying hungry all the time. Know what you want and go for it. Everything falls in place with those three things.”
For Elbaum, being a contestant on Hell’s Kitchen is a long time coming.
“When I was a little kid, I used to watch Gordon Ramsey on Hell’s Kitchen. I really wanted to be there. I saw myself doing it,” Elbaum recalled about his early ambition. “I felt honored to be selected, but it’s all because of Hashem. I used to say that one day I’d be on TV cooking with Gordon Ramsey. People looked at me like I was joking. It was like a kid who says they are going to be an astronaut and go to space.”
This upcoming season of Hell’s Kitchen (the 23rd installment) is actually a first for the franchise in two different ways. The title is “Hell’s Kitchen: Head Chefs Only” because in all previous seasons, the contestants came from all types of positions. This time, only those that run a kitchen (or kitchens, in Elbaum’s case) of their own were eligible to compete. As the contestants compete in teams and are forced to cooperate with each other and rely on their teammates during challenges, the idea of everyone having to revert back to their previous lives as just another cog in the wheel should be intriguing to viewers.
The second way that this season stands out is that it is the first time that the show has been based on the east coast. With filming taking place in Connecticut, Elbaum was able to make a special stop on his way to and from the competition.
“I stopped at the ohel (the gravesite of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson) the day before and the day after the show,” Elbaum said, his connection to his Chabad heritage still clearly active. “It was my way of showing how thankful I was for the opportunity.”
What glimpses of his Judasim can you expect to see on the show?
“I put on tefillin every single day wherever I am,” Elbaum said in true Chabad fashion. “That was one thing that I wanted to make sure I kept doing on the show in front of the cameras. I put on my tefillin in the dorms with my chef coat that said my name, my Jewish star necklace, and my kippah.”
While the tefillin wearing may make it onto the screen or not, more crucial to the plot were the issues that Elbaum was going to have with tasting some of the food. He refused to taste anything that included any non-kosher animals, a hard task given his appearing on a show which usually covers a wide variety of foods. That left him to cook food without actually tasting it on occasion.
“As an executive chef with many years of experience, you can bring me a giraffe and I’ll make you a beautiful, delicious dish and you won’t even know I’ve never cooked it before,” said Elbaum with a flair of his trademark confidence. “That’s part of my job. It’s a big challenge, but that’s the job.”
In general, Elbaum said that he tried to live by some advice that he got just before he left.
“My rabbi told me to both make the Jews watching at home proud of me and to remember that I should be proud to be Jewish.”
Elbaum is no stranger to cameras, as his internet following would suggest. He said that the social media experience certainly helped him not be nervous in front of all the lenses and lights. All in all, he felt that the show was exactly the same as he thought it would be. The competitions were just as fierce, Chef Ramsey was just as fiery during service times (and nice all other times), and it was an amazing experience.
“Imagine standing in a line and Chef Gordon Ramsey is asking you to make beef wellington,” said Elbaum about one of Ramsey’s most famous tests on the show. “It’s unbelievable. As an Argentinian, I felt like I was playing soccer with Messi.”
Hell’s Kitchen: Head Chefs Only premiers on Thursday night, September 26th, 2024, at 8pm EST on Fox.
Article credit: Nati Burnside
