Chef Sam Talbot, Top Chef Dishing it out in the Hamptons
Star-studded celebrity chefs aren’t without their mishaps. Just ask Top Chef season two finalist Sam Talbot, who has since opened The Surf Lodge in east Hampton where he whips up dishes for the likes of Jerry Seinfeld, Molly Sims, Tyson Beckford, Rebecca Romijn, and Jerry O’Connell.
Last summer when he opened the Surf Lodge, Talbot discovered he was unfamiliar with the kitchen setup; the propane tank ran out of gas at 8 p.m., and the restaurant was full with 300 reservations on the books. So Talbot rounded up all the chefs in the kitchen but one, piled into a Humvee-like military vehicle, and hightailed it to someone’s house who had a 200-pound propane tank.
“The nine of us loaded the propane tank into the back,” says Talbot, “and then lurched our way back to the restaurant across bumpy roads. Those things are highly explosiveit had to be the most dangerous thing I’d ever done. But we were back at it within an hour.”