Food Network serves a ‘Dinner Impossible’

Winston Crisp loves the Food Network. A hardcore fan, he eschews the copycat “Iron Chef America,” for example, in favor of the inscrutable Japanese version.

“I’m a purist about its pageantry, its drama and the different style of food,” he said. “It’s almost like a Godzilla movie was crossed with ‘The Galloping Gourmet.’”

When the Food Network’s “Dinner: Impossible” asked to film an episode at Carolina just before Homecoming weekend, Crisp, assistant vice chancellor for student affairs, was therefore delighted to be asked to take part as one of the show’s guest chefs, along with Patti Thorp and Anoop Desai.

Thorp is the wife of Chancellor Holden Thorp. Desai is the bluesy alumnus who competed on “American Idol” and was in town to perform at the Homecoming concert.

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The premise of the show is that the irascible English chef Robert Irvine arrives at a mystery location and is assigned to prepare a meal that includes multiple challenges. He is typically given inexperienced helpers, sketchy ingredients and a major time crunch, and he is famous for creating an atmosphere of tension as he does his best to complete his assignment on time.

The crew arrived on campus Nov. 4 and set up in the courtyard area of the Student Academic Services Building (SASB). The actual taping began on Nov. 5 when Student Body President Jasmin Jones and Doug Dibbert, president of the General Alumni Association, issued Irvine his challenge at the Old Well.

Irvine’s mission was to create a meal for 100 “homesick” first-year students using ingredients gathered by raiding their living quarters.

Crisp and Thorp had about 90 minutes with little to do while Desai and Jones “rushed the dorms” with Irvine. But Thorp and Jones then staged a raid of their own on the Alpha Chi Omega house when they were shy of some much-needed ingredients. “Chef, you’re going to love us,” Thorp announced when they returned with baskets full of food.

“Once the supplies showed up,” Crisp said, “and we started building the menu, we were nonstop and it was frenzied from then on.”

From that point, there was little interaction among chefs because they were so intent on their assigned tasks.

At Crisp’s station, for example, “There were a ton-and-a-half of ramen noodles, bags of Cheetos and Vienna sausages,” he said. “I was looking at the stuff when they came back and wondering, what in the world!”

Once the cooking began, Crisp said, “We pulverized the Cheetos and used that as a breading for the Vienna sausages, which we fried.” As unlikely as that sounds, he said, the students loved it. Plus, he added, “It showed Irvine’s creativity and his ability to be nonplussed.”

When asked if the mood around SASB was as tense as the show portrays, Crisp said it was more of a “fun mad dash to get the meal done.”

There was an initial encounter with Irvine, though, in which he asked Crisp, “What do you cook?” Crisp answered back, “Stuff.” Irvine said, “What stuff?” and Crisp replied, “A lot of stuff.” “I can see that,” Irvine snapped.

Look for the Tar Heel episode of “Dinner Impossible” to air tentatively in March.