By Ken Valenti

Westporters watching Netflix’s latest cooking competition may spot a familiar face.

Sam Seideman, 22, a Staples High School graduate and veteran of several local restaurants, appears as one of the 21 young culinary masters vying for a $500,000 prize and bragging rights in the show Next Gen Chef.

“It was a great experience, I learned a lot, but it wasn’t what I expected,” Seideman said in an interview from his current home in Park City, Utah.

The show pits “America’s hottest young chefs, under the age of 30,” in a battle at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, N.Y., the school’s website says. “The Culinary Institute of America has set a rigorous gauntlet of tests to find who is worthy of being crowned the leading chef of the next generation.”

Seideman loved cooking as a child – “I just naturally gravitated toward the kitchen,” he said – and he began working in restaurants at 14. On the show, he found himself up against competitors with far more rigorous kitchen experience. One is a sous chef at the renowned Manhattan restaurant Per Se, which holds three Michelin stars. Another has worked at 11 Michelin-starred restaurants.

“If I’m walking through the streets of Westport, Connecticut, like, I’m confident,” he says in the opening episode of the show. “People know I know how to cook there.” 

Count Chef Alison Grace among those who believe in him. She knew he was made for the culinary world when she met him in his sophomore year at Staples High School. Grace was one of his chef instructors in the school’s culinary program and was so impressed with him that she hired him as soon as he graduated to work in the kitchen for her business, AMG Catering and Events.

“He’s got the energy for the kitchen, and you could tell he had a natural passion for it as well as natural talent,” she said. “He just had the trifecta.”

Seideman worked there off and on while studying hospitality management at Penn State University, eventually graduating on the dean’s list. Now he works at the Lodge at Blue Sky near his Utah home. It’s a resort that “brings luxury to the next level,” he said.

He also has started a company called SLEIDE Hospitality, which helps kitchens operate more efficiently and save money, the way he did for the kitchen where he worked in a sleepaway camp in Maine.

He was working in that kitchen in July 2024, when he learned he was chosen for the Netflix show just a few days before production was to begin. Pressed for time, he rented a U-Haul and drove back to Westport. A short time later arrived in Hyde Park with two duffel bags, his knife roll and his acoustic guitar.

“I really brought my whole life with me,” he said.

It wasn’t his first time on television. At 17, Seideman was a competitor on a Gordon Ramsay show, Uncharted Showdown. On an episode on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast, Seideman was one of two teenage chefs chosen by the celebrity chef to face off against Ramsay’s daughter Tilly and her teammate. Seideman has fond memories of meeting Gordon Ramsay, who had been a childhood hero.

“He was the nicest dude in the world,” Seideman said. “He was so confident. He made everybody so comfortable.”

On the show, streaming on Disney+, Ramsay says he chose Seideman for his team “because he’s one of the keenest young cooks I’ve seen.”

Spoiler alert: On Next Gen Chef, Seideman does not emerge as the winner. But he said the experience reignited his passion for striving to become a better cook. 

“At the end of the day, I’m not $500,000 richer,” he said. “But I have this eagerness to learn again.”