Pretty Bird’s Chef Viet Pham Is Competing on the Food Network’s “Tournament of Champions”

 Who’s been watching Utah chef Viet Pham compete on Food Network’s “Tournament of Champions,” on Sunday nights? Pham, the founder of Pretty Bird Hot Chicken, made it through the qualifying round last week. He won his head-to-head cookoff in a close battle. Following the “Randomizer” specs to use beef chuck roast, green beans, a meat mallet, and blackening, Pham came up with a version of Vietnamese Shaking Beef, along with a green bean salad.

Of course, this isn’t Pham’s first TV rodeo. He beat Bobby Flay on “Iron Chef America.” He won Bobby Flay’s “Triple Threat.” He won Hulu’s “Chef vs Wild.” He’s also competed on “The Next Food Network Star,” “Guy’s Grocery Games,” “Kitchen Inferno,” “Supermarket Stakeout,” “House of Knives,” and “Extreme Chef.”

As our paths have crossed over the past 16-17 years, I’ve thought of Viet as knowledgable, innovative, hard-working, and personable. All great qualities for cooking contest success.

“All of these are competitions are pretty much the same, in one way or another,” Pham told me in a phone interview a few days ago.

  “You’re given a certain amount of time and an ingredient and some type of challenge, and then you cook whatever you can. The key is to stick with a few dishes that you know really well, that you can adapt.”

 The main thing he’s learned, he said, is “How to perform better on TV and carry myself better, with whatever challenges they throw in the mix.”

Even so, “We still panic at the end of the day. And Tournament of Champions is the one that sends more contestants into therapy,” he said.

The TOC contestants all have impressive resumes, either in cooking shows or running restaurants. For the challenges, host Guy Fieri spins a “Randomizer,” which looks like a giant slot-machine, giving a list of specific ingredients, techniques, and equipment that the chefs must incorporate in their dishes.

  “They give you a list of all the items on the Randomizer ahead of time so you can study,” he said. “But there are so many different possible combinations, that the more people study it, the more they can overthink and fall apart.”

  Viet’s turn to compete was next-to-last, so he had to watch all the other rounds ahead of him and think about which Randomizer items might be left for him to use.

  “After watching battle after battle, I was mentally exhausted,” he said.

  And yet, as he finished his cookoff battle, he had enough energy to leap in the air with a Gene Kelly-like heel click.  

 Maybe he’s more relaxed because, unlike some perennial contestants, his career doesn’t depend or rely on TV shows. For him, it’s a way to promote his Pretty Bird restaurants, now grown to four locations in Utah.

  “I love cooking at the high level and connecting with other cooks, but my life isn’t based on shows,” he said. “A career in TV is very cutthroat. I try not to let mind get tangled in that part of the world.  I’m grateful to have the opportunity to talk about Pretty Bird on national TV. It’s part of our strategy and allows me to be relevant.”

  He credits his wife Alexis Furkioti – Pham, who runs most of the day-to-day Pretty Bird operations.

 “The restaurant world is hard, and I’m fortunate to grow Pretty Bird with my wife. No way would I be able to do these contests if I were running Pretty Bird on my own. The contests are another tool in the basket, that I get to take out and sharpen. It promotes our brand.”

One of his favorite competition experiences, which pushed him mentally and physically – was “Chef vs Wild” on Hulu. It was produced by the same people who did the “Alone” reality series.

The chefs were dropped off for five days in the wilderness of British Columbia, in a cold, rainy October. They had to build their own shelter, and hunt and forage for their food. The chefs also needed to save some of that food to use on their final day’s cook-off.

 Pham won, but “I consumed less than 400 calories a day,” he said, rather than leaving himself empty-handed for the cook-off. “I loved connecting with the land. I love the outdoors and I wanted to test myself.”

I started writing about Viet back in 2009, when he and Bowman Brown were getting their fine-dining restaurant, Forage, up and running. It sounded pretty ambitious to me: serving just one fixed-priced, small-plates tasting menu each night, changing every day based on what was fresh and in season. It ended up with multiple James Beard nominations and a Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs award.

“Opening Forage opened all these great opportunities,” he said.

But after a few years, his background in finance kicked in as he pondered the future of fine dining.

“It was a set menu, with 32 seats, and a meal is two and a half hours long, so you’re not turning a lot of tables each night,” he said. “So there’s a financial possibility cap. I realized the only way to make this work is no build a concept that you can scale.”

And that’s how Pretty Bird came about — a pared-down menu of Nashville-style hot chicken, with a few sides like purple-cabbage cider slaw and crinkle-cut fries,.

Although the simple concept sounds easy, “This is probably 100 times harder than Forage was,” he said. “A lot of what we do is borne on the foundation of fine dining. But we have to hire a lot more people. You have to rely on people who aren’t as skilled, and about 90 percent of our operation is managing people.”

So maybe, testing your cooking mettle against another chef on a TV show can be a change of pace.

My favorite to watch was the Pham’s “Extreme Chef,” reality series in 2012 – a mashup of “Iron Chef” meets “Survivor.”  Challenges included being dropped by helicopter into a desert wasteland where they scavenged for tools and ingredients, and used steel wool, batteries and tumbleweeds to start a cooking fire.

“It was physically and emotionally challenging, very tough,” he said when I interviewed him about the competition back then. “We were taken out of our comfort zone.”

But for Pham, it was also a sentimental journey, since part of the series was filmed in Southeast Asia.

His parents, Hiep and Hoa Pham, were “boat people” who fled Vietnam when it fell to the Communists in the 1970s. They struggled for survival on an island in Malaysia where Pham was born. They eventually were able to immigrate to the United States, ended up in the San Francisco Bay area.  

“I learned a lot about myself and I developed a deep appreciation of what they went through,” said Pham.

 Although he was edged out in the final showdown, judge Simon Majumdar was impressed enough to pass along Viet’s name to his agent. That agent helped arrange his first “Iron Chef” gig.

“Iron Chef” was another high point, as his parents got to be in the Kitchen Stadium audience. Growing up, Viet used to watch the original Japanese “Iron Chef” with his parents, so it was especially cool to have them on the set to share his big moment.

 So what’s next? Most recently, Viet and Alexis served Pretty Bird chicken to 2,500 festival-goers at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival . He has a few other contests lined up that he’s not able to talk about yet. And he will be filming a holiday special with Bobby Flay.  

Meanwhile, you can cheer for him on Sunday nights on the Food Network.