Projects

What began as a phone call we almost dismissed due to the vagueness and lack of detail turned out to be an incredibly fun experience for the whole team.  We visited a number of various undisclosed warehouses and provided several quotes and had meetings about what was even possible, and only after we sat down to sign a contract did they disclose they were the Top Chef crew.  Suddenly their strange requests and mysteriousness all made sense!

Working Quickly

This whole project had to happen very quickly.  An abandoned warehouse in Oak Creek suddenly housed a small army of kitchen help, sound and video production teams, a carpentry crew to build the entire set, and a construction team of local tradespeople to do plumbing, hvac, and electrical.  In a matter of a couple weeks.  

Our scope of work changed several times and ultimately included piping up a whole commercial kitchen cleanup area with water heaters, 3 compartment sinks, a dishwasher, grease trap, and even a mini laundromat on-site.  Then across the warehouse was another dish cleaning station and grease trap.  And of course then we had the on-set plumbing which included a couple sinks and a massive amount of gas for all the grills and fryers (over 1 mBTU which may not sound like much until you’re standing there testing 16 Viking cooktops at once).  And the best part?  The whole installation had to be temporary and removable while still passing code, so we could return the warehouse to it’s original condition 2 months later when filming ended.

Unique Requests

The Top Chef job presented many unusual obstacles and requests, but we had one that may have been a first even in our prolonged history.  Several episodes (Miller Caves, Discovery World) required the competitors to cook at outdoor locations without plumbing.  They tasked us with building a custom solution with a clean water storage tank and pump system (much like a well setup in a house) and a pumped refuse tank for the dirty greasy dish water and mount it all to a trailer.  Oh, and they wanted hot water too.

The Question Everyone Asks

Bryan Faust did get invited to one of the cook off challenges (and made a rather dorky cameo appearance) for season 21 episode 10 at the beachfront fish boil.  The food was almost as good as their plumbing!