Arts & Entertainment

Strongsville Grad Vying to Be 'MasterChef'

Dean Karadimas is contestant on new season of Fox competition show

 

Dean Karadimas is a foodie from way back.

Even before he started school at Allen Elementary, he was trying to cook meals for his family. 

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"I'd always try to weasel my way into the kitchen," recalls Karadimas, a 2005 graduate of Strongsville High School.  "Eventually, my mother let me help her cook." 

The upshot?

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Karadimas became so skilled with a skillet, he won a spot on the new season of MasterChef, the Fox reality show starring Gordon Ramsay in which amateur cooks from across the country compete for the title and a $250,000 grand prize.

The fourth season starts May 22 with a two-hour premiere.

On the show, contestants are assigned to create unique dishes, which are then tasted and rated by Ramsay, restaurateur Joe Bastianich and chef Graham Elliot.

Nerve-wracking? Oh, yeah.

"I was so nervous I could barely talk at times, and so nervous I couldn't stop talking at times," Karadimas recalls. "It was the most intense emotional thing I've ever gone through in my life."

Getting There

Karadimas, a web designer who now lives in downtown Cleveland, defined himself as a chef with his own online cooking show.

He and buddy John Stanchina launched a production company called Forest City Studio in 2010, shot a viral music video for local band Affiance and were talking about their next project one day when Karadimas got hungry and started making guacamole. 

Stanchina started filming and -- ta da -- Dude Cooking Food was born. They ran episodes of the how-to cooking show of YouTube, Facebook and their website in 2011 and got some nice comments from experts -- including Iron Chef Michael Symon.

"That gave me the confidence to try this," says Karadimas, who went up against some 30,000 other cooks from around the country for a shot on MasterChef.

The Audition

So when producers held a casting call at Cleveland State University last fall, Karadimas was ready. 

He prepared Apple-Braised Pork Belly over a bed of Swiss chard with cream sauce, served with parsnip puree, and jumped in the car.

"Luckily for me, I live no more than five minutes away," he said.

While the other contestants -- many of whom had driven 6 to 8 hours for the audition -- were cooking in the parking lot and scrambling to get their dishes ready for judging, Karadimas had a slight edge.

"I had literally just plated five or six minutes ago," he says. "I pulled the foil off, put my hand up and said 'done."

Gordon Ramsay 'The Nicest'

His performance won him a trip to Los Angeles with 99 other hopefuls, all instructed to prepare a signature dish for the three judges, who then narrowed the field to the finalists who would compete for the prize. 

Obviously, Karadimas can't say how he fared in the competition. 

But he can say that Ramsay, well-known for his harsh words to contestants on his TV shows, is "probably one of the nicest men I've ever met in my life."

In fact all three judges -- even the dour, hard-to-please Bastianich -- were "loving people. I hugged all three of them," he says.

Off camera, the judges were mentors to the aspiring chefs.

"Everything is positive, as far as I experienced off camera," he says.

Next -- Sky's the Limit

When filming ended, Karadimas came home with new optimism and a plan. He renovated the kitchen he uses for his cooking show, brought in a crew and started taping professional episodes that "look like a real TV show."

"From there, the goal is to get picked up by a television network," he says.

His dream is to own a restaurant, probably modern Mediterranean-American style, and to travel the world, tasting other cuisine and would inspired his own creations.

"Hopefully, we'll get there," he says. "And really, it's all thanks to MasterChef."

To see Karadimas in action, check out his website, dudecookingfood.com, or check him out on Facebook at http://facebook.com/dudecookingfood. Oh, and want to see his signature dish?  http://dudecookingfood.com/panko-crusted-pork-chop/.


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