North Carolina chefs aim for culinary glory

FOX TV

Kevin Fuller, left, of Greenville, North Carolina and Trey Wade of Charlotte competed on “Master Chef Duos” on Fox. Fuller and Wade have known each other 15 years when Wade was a freshman at East Carolina University and Fuller was a medic to the school’s marching band.

Cooking world class food is harder than it looks.

Trey Wade of Charlotte and Kevin Fuller of New Bern found out firsthand when the two competed on renowned chef Gordon Ramsey's show, “Master Chef Duos.” The show is composed of 12 duos competing against each other in various culinary categories. While Wade and Fuller were eliminated, both said the experience was enlightening. 

“Gordon is very precision driven, calculated, and a very successful chef,” Wade said, “and a lot of us are cooking out of just the pure passion of it. That was a really cool experience to see how that kind of came together, and see how not only me and Kevin navigated that, but the rest of the contestants as well. It’s definitely an intense environment. It's one of those things you can’t even [describe]. It’s hard to explain without somebody just like being in it.”

Fuller, a firefighter, said despite having been through immense pressure throughout his career, this show was different. 

“There’s barely any words that can describe it,” he said. “We all can armchair quarterback anything, in any kind of profession or career.  I’ve been under a lot of pressure in my career, in my life, tons of it – traffic accidents, mass casualty incidents, or just your everyday cardiac arrest. The show was intense, like, very intense. Your blood pressure goes up. Your mind starts racing. You know that you know how to cook, but that time clock is up there. … The pressure is unreal.”

Wade and Fuller, who have been friends for 15 years, met at East Carolina University. 

“We met at East Carolina University, where Trey was a student in the band, and my now wife and I, at the time she was my girlfriend, were the medics for the band,” Fuller said. “I met him of course, working with the band and everything, but, I wanted to use the band, the dance team and the football team and stuff to help propose to my wife. Trey actually helped me get everything together with the band playing the song, them surrounding her and everything. There’s a big YouTube video of the whole thing at the last home game of the season during his freshman year.”

Both have a unique story of how they started their culinary journey.

“My parents were in the military, you would always see them cooking, and I lived with my grandparents for a stint,” Wade said, “and they live a traditional eastern North Carolina life where they don’t go out to eat very much. They grow vegetables and they cook. So, I’d been around family cooking and traveling for a long time, but it wasn't until I got to hang out with Kevin and spend time kind of sneaking in his kitchen… and I would spend time when I finished work at Kevin’s house and hanging out with him and his family and just watching him cook. 

“One thing led to another and after I graduated, I moved to Chicago and just got further and further immersed in the culinary scene from a personal and a professional level.”

Fuller’s grandmother was his inspiration.

“Years ago, my grandmother lost her arm when I was probably about 9 years old,” he said. “She worked at a convenience store and butcher shop, and it was a small convenience store/grocery store. I watched that woman go from not having but one arm to cooking meals like you would back then. It was the Gordon Ramsay-style meal, and she would sit there and figure out a way to still cut onions and still cook, and her food tasted amazing, and that inspired me to cook.”

Fuller became a pitmaster and Wade works in the whiskey business. The two hope to one day compete again on more cooking shows.

“I'm hoping that it opens up so many doors that I can actually do exactly what I want to do with this culinary career,” Fuller said. “I hope to make it on other shows, maybe even a barbecue show. I’m really good at barbecue. I would love to do another show with Trey, absolutely.”

Said Wade: “It's almost hard to even imagine that it couldn't happen again, and something cool or different could happen as well, so I’m definitely open to it. And I would love to have the opportunity to cook alongside Kevin on a big scale, on the big stage again, whether it’s at food festivals or on TV or just, like Kevin said, as many people we can serve and share our passion and craft with the better.”

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