‘MasterChef’ USA interview: Jonny Blanchard on lobster crackerjack, elimination
As a television viewer and a writer, it’s pretty impossible to watch a season of “MasterChef” and not have some favorites. For us, one of the guys we personally rooted for was Jonny Blanchard. He was friendly, had a unique take on food, and really just seemed like the kind of guy you’d want to grab a drink and hang out with.
Unfortunately, he was also a guy who had no experience in making macaroons, which led to his elimination this season. We had a chance to chat with the carpenter from Massachusetts about his innovative audition dish, his challenges making some desserts, and what exactly he wants to do with food now that he has been through what has to be the biggest gauntlet for any sort of amateur chef in America.
CarterMatt – Okay so first of all, how many people come up to you and ask about that lobster crackerjack that you auditioned with?
Jonny Blanchard – Oh, people come up to me all the time and are like ‘I want that recipe,’ and I’m always like ‘I can let you come over and have a bite, but I can’t tell you how to make it.’
So is that the sort of thing that you really enjoy, cooking something that’s a little out there and inventive?
Yeah, we try to come up with stuff here and there. It was just one of those random things. My dad and I have lobster farms, my dad has a small house in the Cape, and we get lobsters every day. Sometimes we get really lucky and come back with like 20 or 30 in a day, and we can’t just have lobster every single day; you got to try something different.
Is cooking the sort of thing that you’ve been wanting to do since you were a kid?
Yeah. When I grew up we all had season tickets to the Patriots back when they sucked, and tickets were like $10 a piece. We used to get like 10 or 12 of us to go. My uncle ran a kitchen and a steakhouse for years, and I had a tremendous upbringing [with that]. My dad had a construction company, so we had a lot of the guys go [to these games], and I was the ten-year old kid getting to hang around the grill and watch everything [happen].
What made you want to audition for this? Was it a show you watched a lot of?
No, actually. I play hockey with my buddies every Tuesday night, and one of the guys on the team, his sister was a huge fan of the show, and she saw a few things I posted on Facebook of some things that I was cooking, and she was like ‘you have to try out for this show.’ I was like ‘what are you talking about,’ and I went for the audition and just took it from there. Never really expected to make it, but I went from one round to the next round to the next.
As cool as it was to watch our audition from here, were you nervous that bringing in something that was so different would make it hard on you in front of the judges?
I walked through the door and I actually started laughing when I saw the judges. I wasn’t really nervous; it was just one of those surreal moments. I’m walking in to meet these three guys, and [was thinking] w”hat the hell am I doing here?” I was in Massachusetts in my driveway a week ago, and now I’m in Los Angeles, walking in with this dish. They’re either going to hate it or love it; there’s no in-between for them.
Was there anything you were surprised by over the course of this competition? Were you able to handle all of the stress of the long hours and the different personalities?
You get a lot of mid-20s and mid-30-year-olds who are used to doing their own thing, and then you get them together and it’s like being back in grammar school again. Everyone’s going to be here at this time, you’re going to wear this, and you’re going to do this. A lot of people don’t want to do that … Just the entire [scale] of the whole production [is surprising], you go there and you’re like ‘wow, this is a big deal. There is a lot of moving parts to this'”
There were times where I would get occasionally frustrated with the show because you would disappear for stretches of time. Was there anything that you wish that they had shown?
In the cupcake challenge, I never bake, and I thought I had some amazing cupcakes that I put together and I pulled completely out of my rear. But then I never saw them on the show, and I was like ‘you gotta be kidding me?!’. I told everyone at home that I had these amazing cupcakes that I made, and they never even showed it. That was the one thing that I really wished had made the camera.
Going into that pressure test with the macaroons, what was your feeling? Were you nervous, and were you upset first of all that you weren’t saved?
Obviously nobody wants to be in that situation, but when it was just me and Lynn I though ‘oh boy, this is Thunderdome.’ I knew it was going to be tough.
And then you saw the macaroons come out.
That was a nightmare. The moment I saw the box I knew it was not going to be something that I knew how to do. Of course, [I was talking to Lynn] and he said he made them a few times, and I was like ‘well, you got experience on me already.’
What do you think was the real reason that you went home: Was it because of you slamming the box shut, or is there more that we didn’t necessarily see?
In that particular challenge I had already messed up before I slammed the box. My batter was a little too thick, and we only had a certain amount of eggs that we were allowed to use in each challenge and I really couldn’t fix it. So when I cut them, they were too tall and they were a little crustier than they should have been. I thought they were going to settle down and become this wonderful cookie that would fit in the box, and three minutes after I put them in the oven I knew I was in trouble; they were already falling apart. They may have tasted good, but I knew they weren’t right.
What do you think is next for you, and how do you think you’re going to use what you’ve learned here in the rest of your career?
I’m actually talking to Malcolm from the show and we live pretty close to each other, so we may try to do something together. I’m getting ready to throw my first tailgate party up at a golf course in Maine at the end of July. That’s the first big project, and we’re thinking about 60-100 people. We’re just going to try that out, and then we’ll see what the scale is going to be from that moving forward.
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Do you miss Jonny on the show already? If you want to check out our most-recent “MasterChef” review, you can do so over at the link here.
Photo: Fox