ECC alum appears on 'Hell's Kitchen'

Keirstin Westfallen
Staff Writer
ECC Culinary Arts graduate Wil Kocol has been to hell and back as a contestant on season five of FOX network’s Hell’s Kitchen, a game show in which hopeful chefs compete for a culinary prize under the intense and unnerving gaze of renowned Chef Gordon Ramsey.

Kocol began attending the ECC Culinary Arts and Hospitality Institute in 2002. He graduated from the program in 2006 with a degree in culinary/restaurant management. He said ECC’s Culinary Arts program helped to prepare him for life.

Culinary Arts program coordinator Jill Russell agreed, saying “the greatest strength of the program is that we produce quality students.”

Kocol, who has had an interest in cooking for almost his entire life, auditioned for Hell’s Kitchen in the summer of 2007 at an open casting call in Chicago. Kocol watched the show for the first time in its third season, and said he initially wanted to audition because it sounded fun.

The audition process, he said, contained “surprisingly enough, no cooking at all.” Instead, the auditions consisted of interviews with casting directors, some call back auditions, a resume submission and finally a trip to Los Angeles to meet the producers for more interviews.

Once he was an official Hell’s Kitchen contestant, Kocol soon realized the show was first and foremost a game show, and as such the abilities to play a game were just as essential as the abilities to excel in the kitchen.

“You’re basically given the book of the menu and you have to try and cram everything in and learn everything for every single station with every single ingredient in only a couple of hours,” Kocol said. “Hell’s Kitchen is an extremely unique experience, being a competition.”

On the season premiere, Kocol nominated himself for elimination, which is something he said he has been experiencing much criticism for. Still, he said he wouldn't have done anything differently.

“The people who know me and the people who have worked with me know that it was completely in character with who I am,” Kocol said. "I took [the competition] as working in a professional kitchen. [When] you mess up [or] something goes horribly, horribly wrong, you own up and you take responsibility.”

When Kocol did own up on Hell’s Kitchen,Ramsey eliminated him that same night, showing that the same philosophy does not translate well into a game show setting.

“[Honesty] makes for really poor reality, [or] ‘television’,” Kocol said. To anyone who has ever watched the show, it would appear that Ramsey and his intimidating personality take up a huge source of stress for the contestants.

Due to the regulations on contact between Ramsey and the contestants during the show’s taping, Kocol and the other contestants were not allowed to really talk to him during breaks. Still, Kocol said “basically, everything that you saw [on the show] is pretty much true.”

All in all, Kocol said Hell’s Kitchen was a memorable experience through which he “learned how to deal with yourself in stressful situations.”