Viet Pham of Pretty Bird Is Competing Again! This Time on the Food Network’s “24 in 24”

If you missed Utah chef Viet Pham’s turn on the Food Network’s Tournament of Champions, you can catch him competing Sunday night on 24 in 24: Last Chef Standing. 

  This is the third season of the culinary marathon, where where 24 chefs take on 24 cooking challenges over the course of 24 straight hours. It’s shot in real time and hosted by Michael Symon and Esther Choi.

   From strategy and speed to precision and elevation, the challenges are divided into eight shifts that reflect the intensity of a chef’s daily life. The chef who survives all of the unexpected twists and turns while battling fatigue wins $100,000 — the biggest prize in the show’s history.  

Season 3 premieres on Food Network Sunday, April 26 at 8|7c and streams the next day on HBO Max and discovery+.  

The 24 chefs competing are: Robyn Almodovar, Avishar Barua, Cris Brown, Dawn Burrell, Monique Cadavona, Sam Fore, Lex Grant, Trimell Hawkins, Anthony Iracane, Maryam Ishtiaq, Joe Isidori, Brian Malarkey, Maria Mazon, Christina Miros, Shota Nakajima, Olivia Ostrow, Viet Pham, Michele Ragussis, Alex Stupak, Lee Anne Wong, Molly Yeh, Zac Young, Ara Zada and Antonello Zito.

If you’re a fan of TV cooking competitions, Viet is likely a familiar face. Pham, the founder of Pretty Bird Hot Chicken, and Forage restaurant, beat Bobby Flay on “Iron Chef America.”  In fact, he’s known as the only chef to beat Bobby Flay twice. He also won Bobby Flay’s “Triple Threat” and 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.” (Forgive me if I’ve left a few out…so many to keep up with!)

On FN’s Tournament of Champions, which concluded last week, Viet won his first round while cooking against culinary icon Jonathan Waxman. But, he lost in the Round of 16 to chef Shirley Chung.  (The championship was ultimately won by chef Bryan Voltaggio.)

Viet also competed on Season One of “24 in 24” so he knows what he’s getting into.

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. I fondly recall his watch parties for “Extreme Chef” and “Iron Chef America” in 2012 and 2013. There were so many Utah chefs cheering for Viet at the “Iron Chef” party that one guest commented, “If a bomb was dropped here tonight, there wouldn’t be any chefs left in Salt Lake City!”

Since then, the Food Network has evolved from mainly “instructional” cooking shows to culinary sports, They attract a huge audience who love watching chefs compete against each other.

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

He said his main reason for competing on TV is to promote his Pretty Bird restaurants, now grown to four locations in Utah. Unlike some perennial contestants, he doesn’t rely on TV competitions as his career.

 “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. They also had 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.”

My favorite to watch was the Pham’s “Extreme Chef,” reality series in 2012 – a mashup of “Iron Chef” meets “Survivor.”  It was also a sentimental journey for Pham, 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.  His parents named him “Viet” and his brother was named “Nam,” in honor of their homeland.

“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.

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 for Salt Lake City: 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 financial background kicked in as he pondered the future of fine dining.

“Forage 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 to 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.

On FN’s Season 7 Tournament of Champions, which concluded last week, Viet won his first round while cooking against culinary icon Jonathan Waxman. But, he lost in the Round of 16 to chef Shirley Chung.  (The championship was ultimately won by chef Bryan Voltaggio.) And now, you can cheer for him the next few Sunday nights on the Food Network.