DOWNERS GROVE – Downers Grove native Tim Havidic won about $20,000 on the Food Network show “Cutthroat Kitchen,” but if you ask him about it, he’s the definition of nonchalant.
He didn’t even watch the episode when it aired in August.
"It was in LA – it was like homecoming – I used to work out there," Havidic, 25, said. "So
it was sort of fun. I hadn't seen the people I used to work with in LA for four years. I told them I was coming out there, and I was really excited about it, and I wasn't able to focus at all about the show."
“Cutthroat Kitchen” is more of a game show than cooking show, he said, as contestants complete in culinary challenges while fighting through “sabotages” the other competitors can buy to trip each other up.
Each contestant starts with $25,000, and the cost of sabotages deducts from their potential winnings.
One sabotage left Havidic to make a lobster roll after the ingredients, bread included, were dunked in the lobster tank. Another sabotage replaced his cutting utensils with wire. One of his competitors got stuck wearing lobster claws for hands, and another had to carry around an anchor.
“The constant trash talking (show producers) encouraged us to do was pretty hilarious,” he said. “I had some good zingers, but I keep to myself, mostly. It was all friendly.”
Perhaps Havidic’s laid-back attitude helped him win the show, or it could be that at 25 he’s already worked as the Executive Chef at Moto’s former sister restaurant, iNG, and is currently the sous-chef at SoHo House Chicago.
It might also be that he’s been approaching cooking like a sport since he joined the competitive cooking team at Technology Center of DuPage’s culinary program as a high schooler.
“You don’t just have to slave away and cook and just be crazy working 20 hours a day,” he said. “You can actually have fun with it. I treated it like sport. You always want to be done first with your stuff, and you get the prize at the end. In real life the prize is a better paycheck or salary.”
Havidic said the TCD Culinary program played a large role in encouraging his love for cooking and his current success.
After high school, Havidic went on to study at the Culinary Institute of America in New York, followed by a butchering apprenticeship in Kingston, N.Y. That led to his stint in LA helping to launch a butchery, before moving back to Chicago.
Eventually, he said he’d like to open his own restaurant, maybe a Spanish tapas place or a small, 60-seat tasting menu restaurant like Schwa.