Island chef Lucy Morrow to compete on Top Chef Canada

Islanders may know chef Lucy Morrow as a waste reducer, chef to top CEOs, one of the chefs behind Local. Supper Club, and now the former executive chef at Terre Rouge Craft Kitchen will be competing on Top Chef Canada.

The 26-year-old chef is one of 12 contestants from across the country chosen for the show's eighth season. The show has already been filmed and will premiere in April. 

"I wanted to be a part of Top Chef Canada because I've loved competitive reality TV for a very long time," Morrow told CBC Radio: Mainstreet. 

"I'm super competitive and I've seen people I know go on it a lot and I needed to know if I could do that too."

Top Chef Canada is a competition-style show. In each episode, participants first compete in a what's called a "quickfire challenge" in which they have 20-30 minutes to make a dish and are then judged to win prizes. 

The competitors then face an elimination challenge where they are give a set of rules and a timeline and then must cook a dish that fits the description in the prescribed time. The contestants are then judged and someone is eliminated from the show.  

'I went on it for myself'

"The first time standing up in front of those judges, like my knees were shaking, my hands are sweating, your heart is pounding, and ya it's pretty scary," said Morrow. 

"You're competing for $100,000 and for the title of Top Chef Canada, so I mean you kind of have to expect that it's going be really hard."

Tourism P.E.I. also joins the cast of season eight of Top Chef Canada as a sponsor. One quickfire challenge will see the chefs compete in a culinary skills test using P.E.I. ingredients, with the final two chefs facing off for the chance to win $5,000. 

Later in the season, the chefs will compete in an elimination challenge in which they will have to create a dish highlighting an ingredient native to the Island, with the winner receiving a trip for two to P.E.I.

"I think I went on it for myself to see what I can do," said Morrow. "The byproduct of that for my career will be great, but for the most part, I was just seeing how far I could go and what my skill level was and how I stacked up against some of the best chefs in the country."

'I do just constantly grind'

Morrow can't reveal how she did on the show. 

"That's kind of a fun secret to keep, because people want to know and I do know … You'll just have to wait and see," she said. "I'm happy with how I did."

The Nova Scotia native graduated from the The Culinary Institute of Canada in 2014. Morrow is no longer with Terre Rouge (now Terra Rossa), but said things are lining up and she will be a chef somewhere else soon.

"I've always put in a lot of hard work and I think I've gotten the opportunities that I have because I do just constantly grind," she said.

"And even as hard as you work and as demanding as the industry is, you're still not fully prepared for how mentally physically, exhausting Top Chef Canada is."

Season eight of Top Chef Canada premieres April 13 at 10 p.m. ET on Food Network Canada.

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