PHOENIX - The Valley is home to some fabulous chefs and one of them is gaining national attention, competing on the popular Food Network show, "Chopped."
The episode Chef Justin Beckett was on, airs Tuesday night. So, Beckett is staying pretty tight lipped about his incredible experience, until he makes his debut.
"Ready, set, here's ingredients you don't know and go," Beckett said as he described his time in the Big Apple. "Go cook!"
Beckett says cameras were everywhere he looked as he faced off against talented chefs on the Food Network.
"It was an incredible process like nothing I'd ever done before," Beckett said. "It was an incredibly long day. It was very demanding."
Chef Beckett, who runs Phoenix's Beckett's Table and Southern Rail, says the Food Network approached him about competing on the show months ago.
"So we started the process with the interviews and the applications," Beckett said. "And as we got down the road, they ended up sending camera crews to the restaurant and then we went out to New York to do the actual filming."
Once on the show, Chef Beckett competed against three other chefs. They were each given a basket of mystery ingredients they had to turn into an appetizing and eye catching meal that impressed the judges. It all had to be done in under 30 minutes.
"One of the things I was most surprised about when I was on the show was the amount of people it took to pull it off," he said. "There were 15 cameras. There were judges."
Chef Beckett couldn't say much more about his competition other than the episode is called, "Sensational Sandwiches."
They really put some unique cool stuff in baskets that you may not think would fit on a sandwich," he said. "So that's the fun part, watching myself and the other contestants cooking these crazy things altogether to make one delicious bite."
He was hoping to wow the judges and bring a bite of that $10,000 prize back home to his local restaurants, Southern Rail and Beckett's Table.
Chef Beckett's episode airs Tuesday at 7 p.m. on the Food Network. There's a viewing party at Southern Rail from 6 to 9 p.m. For details, click here.