Season 12, Episode 2
"A Guts Reaction"
Chopped Champion Fatima Ali
Episode theme: none
Original air date June 12, 2012
Image of rambutan fruit; dessert round ingredient.
Image by Fathima Shanas from Pixabay.
Meet the Chefs
Kerenza Ventura
Chef Kerenza started her career in the Chicago fine dining scene, but by the time she competed on Chopped, she had moved on to the city of New Orleans. She spent a decade there working for distinguished chefs in renowned restaurants, including Commander’s Palace. Now, she appears to have left the demands of working in Michelin-starred restaurants behind for the steadier pace of institutional food service.
Robert Magsalin
Las Vegas chef Robert “Mags” Magsalin’s pursuit of offbeat deliciousness had just begun when he appeared on Chopped. He had co-founded the food truck, Fukuburger, specializing in a unique brand of Japanese-American-inspired burgers. Their expansion into a brick-and-mortar in Hollywood/Los Angeles lasted six years and overlapped with the opening of their first permanent location in Las Vegas in 2014. Still thriving, Chef Magsalin and Fukuburger have grown to two off-strip locations in Vegas, an outpost in Allegiant Stadium, and food truck catering. He also returned to television for an appearance on Cooking Channel’s Carnival Kings in 2018.
Steve Luttrell
Chef Steve Luttrell is a second-generation graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. In his early career, he concentrated on cooking classic French cuisine at high-end restaurants such as La Grenouille in New York City. Since then, Chef Luttrell’s Francophile ways have relaxed, and he left the big city for the country. As the chef/butcher at The Farmstead Butcher, he spent six years purveying all-local meats from the premises of the small, family-run Rettland Farm outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Currently, Chef Steve is living and working in Nashville, Tennessee at Dino’s Bar & Grill, a dive bar recognized for serving one of the best cheeseburgers in the country.
Fatima Ali
When Chef “Fati” Fatima Ali competed on Chopped, she was just twenty-two years old and the youngest champion since the show began. She was born and raised in Pakistan, schooled at the Culinary Institute of America, and trained by Michelin-starred chefs. In season fourteen, she revisited the Chopped kitchen for a Champions event. She also competed on season fifteen of Bravo TV’s Top Chef and was voted the fan-favorite contestant. Sadly, Chef Fati passed away in 2019 at just twenty-nine years old due to Ewing’s sarcoma bone cancer. Before her death, she penned a moving essay regarding her terminal diagnosis. It was published in Bon Appetit and later posthumously honored by the James Beard Foundation.