At the start of Hulu’s new competition series “Secret Chef,” Fort Lauderdale home cook Alexa Santos sits in a quiet room with no kitchen tools, ovens or other contestants. Subdividing the room is a large conveyor belt, and when it roars to life, a metal cake dome glides into view.
When she removes the lid, Santos discovers her first mystery ingredient — a single egg —- and a note proclaiming her secret alias: Chef Bologna. Later, there’s a prompt: She and other isolated contestants have one hour to cook their best egg dish.
Over the next 10 episodes of this bingeable series, cooked up by producer David Chang (Netflix’s “Ugly Delicious”) and debuting in its entirety on June 29, the contestants pursue a $100,000 grand prize while cooking in what the show calls an “underground cooking facility.” Everyone is assigned an independent kitchen and fake names, and each must taste and rate others’ dishes as part of blind tastings.
“It was like Alice in Wonderland but so much scarier,” Santos, 30, recalls with a laugh.
Santos, who has more than 380,000 followers combined on Instagram and TikTok, is no slouch in the food world. An influencer and recipe creator for a food media company, Santos posts easy and approachable dishes on her social media accounts, from toasted avocado squares and baked eggs to asparagus prosciutto and grilled cheese garlic bread.
(Alexa Santos / Courtesy)
Alexa Santos, a Fort Lauderdale home cook and influencer, is competing on the cooking competition reality series “Secret Chef,” streaming June 29 on Hulu. (Alexa Santos / Courtesy)None of that prepared Santos for her bewildering experience as both chef and judge on “Secret Chef.”
Of course, she can’t reveal whether she won the competition. But in this question-and-answer session, Santos — or should we say “Chef Bologna” — chatted with the South Florida Sun Sentinel about her grind as a food content creator, living with parents who worked in South Florida restaurants, and how she would spend the grand prize.
Q: So, what are you doing right now and what is this interview interrupting?
A: I just got back from a content creation trip in Asia, but currently I’m juggling some content creation deadlines for brands that I submit recipes for and for my Instagram and TikTok, @alexawhatsfordinner. I work from home and make my own schedule, which is nice, but it also puts me in more of a 24-7 mindset where everything I do is about making food content for my pages. It’s nice to have that fire under your butt, to know that every piece of content I don’t put out into the world is a lottery ticket I didn’t buy.
Hulu / Courtesy
Fort Lauderdale’s Alexa Santos, center-left, is one of 10 contestants vying for a grand prize of $100,000 in Hulu’s “Secret Chef.” The 10-episode series will debut on June 29. (Hulu / Courtesy)Q: Was being on the set of “Secret Chef” as bewildering as it looked?
A: It was wild! I basically walked onto a set with nine strangers with different backgrounds in the culinary world, from professionals to home cooks. It wasn’t like “Top Chef” or “Chopped,” where you know how the challenge will unfold. Everyone gets an alias and rates each other’s skills anonymously. It’s a mind game in that sense, trying to figure out how to judge completely objectively. I’m very excited to see how this thing looks to the outside viewer, because the concept is so new.
Q: So it’s kind of like a double-blind cooking contest?
A: Exactly. There are no judges and you’re only judging each other’s performances. It puts you in a mindset of like, am I rating someone badly because I know that they’re better than me and I want them out or am I being an objective person? And are other people just playing the game or are they being honest? At first I was like, “OK, maybe I’ll make some alliances.” But no. At any given time, you have no idea whose food you’re tasting.
Q: The opening of the show seriously looks like you stumbled onto the set of “Squid Game.”
A: Oh my gosh, I can’t tell you how many times I said that when we were filming. I was like, “It’s ‘Squid Game’ but with cooking! I was like, what are they gonna do to us? We would hear these dinging noises that tell us to walk into another room. You never know what’s going to be there.
Q: How were you selected for the show? Did Hulu approach you?
A: I was a senior producer for another food media company. So when I got approached by the casting associate, I didn’t know I was going to get it, but I did have some credentials. I was hoping to expand my presence as a food media personality. When the show started, I had maybe 17,000 followers on Instagram. In a period of about six weeks while we were filming the show, I went from 17,000 to 100,000 followers on Instagram as my reels took off.
(Hulu / Courtesy)
On Hulu’s cooking competition series “Secret Chef,” 10 chefs of varying skills cook inside these isolated kitchens and rate each other’s dishes using secret aliases. (Hulu / Courtesy)Q: So your account blew up while you were filming, not afterward?
A: Yeah. It was serendipitous and had nothing to do with me being on the show. I wasn’t even allowed to tell anybody I was on the show. I don’t know if being on the show was just my good luck charm or what, or just persistence and timing.
Q: Since the show was produced by David Chang, how much of a personal hero is he to you?
A: He’s built an empire on sharing stories of cuisines people cook around the world, and that’s my dream job. I grew up watching cooking competition TV. That’s what inspired me to get into food media. Me and my dad would watch the really old-school Japanese-dubbed “Iron Chef” episodes, plus Emeril Lagasse and Rachael Ray. I know it’s a cliche when food content creators tell you that they all wanna be the next Anthony Bourdain. I have a home-cooking background and didn’t go to culinary school. I think it’s my lack of experience that has helped my content relate to more people. The way social media has evolved, when you post recipes, it’s like the easier, the better, because people think to themselves, “I can do that.”
Q: Approachable and easy seem to describe the type of recipes you post on your social media feeds, right?
A: It’s whatever I think is fun, visually appealing, approachable, but it’s still going to make you think, “I’ll grab a couple of ingredients and figure it out.” Something that’s not too intimidating. You’ll never see me posting about making sous vide short ribs or something because a) I don’t know how to do it and b) it’s too complicated for a 30-second, short-form video.
Q: Did I hear your parents ran a restaurant in South Florida?
A: They weren’t owners, but when we moved to Weston when I was little, my mom managed the old Max’s Grille. When I was 6 or 7, I worked at the hostess stand and rolled silverware and mom was like, “OK, Alexa, mark off table 17 on the dry-erase board, we’re gonna sit them there.” Meanwhile, my dad was teaching me about food safety from the time I was 4. My parents basically worked in every hospitality position their whole careers, back-of-house, front-of-house, and did everything but cook.
Q: What are some of your favorite local restaurants?
A: What I do with recipes is the exact opposite of what I look for in restaurants. I want them to knock my socks off, so I like Evelyn’s at the Four Seasons, Anthony’s Runway 84 (both in Fort Lauderdale), The Grove (in Delray Beach) and La Perla di Pompano.
Q: How would you spend the $100,000 prize money?
A: When producers asked me that on the show, I didn’t really have good answers. At first I was like, “I’ll move out of my parents’ basement.” But now that my content is taking off, it’s hard to stop. I’d love to pause and take a legitimate vacation first, which is invaluable as far as mental health, and then come back and pay a video editor to help me.
