According to Jennifer Gavin, Hell’s Kitchen is nothing compared to Chicago’s South Side. Gavin, 24, the only Black female contestant on the FOX network’s reality series, said that a life in the Auburn-Gresham community, where crime is high and hustlers ro
“The neighborhood I grew up in pretty much forced you to be strong, to stand up for yourself and be who you are. “That’s the only way you survive where I’m from. I have that survival attitude in the kitchen,” Gavin said. She is currently a frontrunner on the show%uFFFDa fact her teammates confessed to world renown chef and the show’s judge, Gordon Ramsay, in the fourth episode. But Gavin said it’s not the first time she’s stood out. Growing up, Gavin attended St. Sabina Elementary School, and later Morgan Park High School where she was a freshman starter on the football team%uFFFDthe first girl in Chicago Public Schools history to do so.
“They called me the ‘Grid Iron Girl,’” she recalled. “I definitely (loved) to be the center of attention.” But a fight her junior year got Gavin kicked out of Morgan Park and sent to an alternative school called Latino Youth. It was there that she was introduced to Gallery 37, a creative arts program where she learned to sculpt fruits and ice, and do charcuterie, or sausage making. “I actually sculpted Mayor [Richard M.] Daley’s face into a melon,” she recalled with a laugh.
“I saw that food was not only for sustenance. It can be a creative outlet at well.” Gavin took her passion for food to college, enrolling in the top ranked Kendall College culinary arts school in north suburban Evanston and completing internships in Paris and Dinant, Belgium. “I worked at a restaurant called La Grill [in Belgium], and did all aspects of the kitchen, working on a brigade with about 40 chefs,” she said. “It was extremely fine dining.
We picked vegetables and fruits from our own garden out back. We had our own [chicken] coop. Sometimes I would even get up early and go fishing.” Gavin’s first restaurant management job out of college was at the Black-owned multi-million dollar restaurant chain BJ’s Market and Bakery. She was only 20 years old. But the rise through the ranks of the restaurant industry was at times difficult for Gavin. “It’s something I’ve struggled with.
I grew up in a very rough neighborhood, and just the way people talk around there is different%uFFFD using slang. As I got introduced into more of a business type environment, it was an awakening. I have to be professional and talk professionally at all times. Especially on Hell’s Kitchen, I was really the only one like me,” she said. Gavin pressed on, and by the time she auditioned for Hell’s Kitchen, she was a chef at the Capital City Club, an exclusive country club in Atlanta.
Gavin said that the show caught her attention instantly. “When I saw season three airing, I was really intrigued, and I wanted to go. So I drove about four and a half hours to Charlotte, N.C. for my audition,” she said. She used her melon trick again, carving “Jen Gavin Season Four Winner” into the fruit, and presenting it. It worked, and Gavin beat out 22,000 people to be cast for season four. The competition’s grand prize is a senior sous chef position at Ramsay’s newest restaurant, The London, West Hollywood.
“For one, it’s a huge salary, but the culinary significance is the weight that the name carries. To have such a high title-senior sous chefat Ramsay’s restaurant on your resume, that just speaks volumes about your culinary capabilities,” Gavin said. Sous chef is the second highest ranking at a restaurant, with executive chef being the highest. Grand prize aside, Gavin is enjoying the success she’s achieved thus far.
She said that she loves cooking French cuisine, and high end restaurants Charlie Trotter’s and the Everest are her Chicago favorites. “They’re expensive, but especially with Trotter, his attention to detail is great. The food is always good. “I’m a foodie, so I always appreciate the dΘcor, and the pairing of the food and wine together,” she said. And as for so many things, Chicago remains a source of Gavin’s culinary inspiration.
“There’s a lot of creativity in Chicago. I have a lot of mentors who taught me how to take basic ingredients, and turn them into something extraordinary,” she said.
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