Lewes restaurant family on Guy Fieri TV show

The Gates family, owners of The Buttery restaurant and The Gate House of Lewes, are now part of an exclusive club that has only a few other Delaware chefs as members.

They join chefs Robbie Jester and Kip Poole and culinary arts student Kevin Castro as First State-based contestants who have competed on the Food Network TV show, "Guy's Grocery Games."

The elimination-round culinary competition show, hosted by spiky-haired celebrity chef Guy Fieri, is now in its 14th season.

Chip and Gretchen Gates along with their adult sons Wilson and Taylor will be featured on a July 9 episode of the Food Network show, airing at 8 p.m. It will be repeated at 3 a.m. July 10 and 7 p.m. July 16 and will be available on Demand.

This will be the first time a chef from Delaware will win the competition.

Save the hate mail. We're not giving anything away or spoiling the surprise. The Gates family were the only contestants on the Season 13 episode called "All in the Family." 

One of them is taking home prize money and, more importantly, bragging rights. 

"I was beyond impressed," says Wilson of the TV show that's taped in California. "It was jaw-droppingly impressive."

“Guy’s Grocery Games” challenges four contestants to shop for and then cook ingredients found in a made-for-TV grocery store called Flavortown Market. The contestants play games that include shopping for ingredients they then must make into dishes.

The program, created and hosted by Fieri, tests a cook’s ability to think, move, shop and cook as fast and creatively as possible.

The dishes are tasted by judges and the cook making the least tasty dish is eliminated.

The judges for the program featuring the Gates family include “Food Network Star” winner Damaris Phillips, TV host and producer Marc Summers and Joseph "Rev. Run" Simmons, a founding member of the hip-hop group Run–D.M.C.

Because of contractual obligations, the family couldn't share many details about the episode before it airs. But the Food Network did offer a little bit information about the program.

The family members first face-off includes making a hot lunch using only five pounds of ingredients. Next, they're challenged to make a noodle dish from "goofy ingredients"  that they have to get from a gumball machine. Finally, the last two remaining chefs make their favorite family dish using ingredients from either the odd- or even-numbered aisles.

The Gates family has never appeared on a TV program before, and Wilson says they were surprised to find that the show was not scripted or rehearsed. It also really was a competition.

"It truly is right-off-the-cuff, especially with the shopping and cooking," Wilson says. "It's like 'Here it is: Go!' " 

Gretchen Gates says Triage Entertainment producers from the Food Network series contacted the family late last summer about appearing on the program after reading articles about their Delaware restaurants that have appeared in The News Journal and delawareonline.com. 

The Gates story appealed to producers because Gretchen, Taylor, and Wilson are all trained chefs.

Gretchen graduated from Le Cordon Bleu College of the Culinary Arts in Scottsdale, Ariz., and her sons studied at the Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park in New York. Dad Chip is an attorney, but he also knows his way around the kitchen.

(Full disclosure: I've known the family for a long time.)

Gretchen Gates cooked in Arizona and the Washington, D.C. area, Wilson had been at the Four Seasons in Jackson Hole, Wyo., and Taylor cooked at Jean-Georges in New York.

In April 2014, the family, who are Wilmington natives, opened The Gate House of Lewes, a 66-seat French bistro at 109 W. Market St., that was formerly the home of Cafe Azafran. At that time, all three Gates chefs worked in the kitchen.

Since then, Taylor has moved onto Virginia's Three Notch'd Brewing Co., and Gretchen handed over much of the daily restaurant operational reins to Wilson.

Last summer, shortly after the Fourth of July holiday, the family took over The Buttery Restaurant, a longtime Lewes landmark.

In the past year, Wilson says he has made much-needed improvements to the 24-year-old restaurant in a restored, yellow and green Victorian mansion at the corner of Second Street and Savannah Road. The floors have been refinished and the interior has been refreshed with new window treatments, plates, and glasses. Joe Churchman, who had been a chef and co-owner of Rehoboth's former Bramble & Brine restaurant, is now running The Buttery's kitchen.

"It's going really well," said Wilson, as he was gearing up for the busy Fourth of July weekend. "And the Gatehouse is doing even better than I ever expected. There's been a great uptick this past year." 

The family has had to keep a secret about being contestants on the Food Network show for more than six months. The episode was actually filmed last November in Santa Rosa, California.

Gretchen says two things stood out regarding the family's appearance that took two days to tape: Fieri is a very nice guy, and the immense size and variety of food available at the Flavortown Market was amazing.

Wilson says Fieri is "100 percent exactly what you see on TV. He amazes me. The way he acts on camera is the way he acts off camera. He's nice, he's funny. I love the fact that there's no pretension in what he does." 

Robbie Jester, executive chef at the Stone Balloon Ale House in Newark, has had face-to-face encounters with Fieri and received widespread recognition after his three appearances on  “Guy’s Grocery Games” in 2015 and 2016. He also bested celebrity chef Bobby Flay in 2016 on the Food Network show, "Beat Bobby Flay."

Jester has said the Food Network appearances have been great for business at the Stone Balloon Ale House restaurant.

Kip Poole, culinary arts instructor at William Penn High School in New Castle, shopped and cooked as a contestant on “Guy’s Grocery Games" in October 2016. He dressed as a goofy "lunch lady"  for a "Halloween Spook-Tacular" episode. 

Poole was contacted by Food Network casting agents through his Linkedin profile and agreed to be a contestant to bring greater awareness to his culinary arts students at William Penn.

Wilson Gates says he watched a few episode of "Guy's Grocery Games," known as "Triple G," before appearing on the show, but did little other preparations.

He's not sure if the upcoming episode will mean a bump in business at his restaurants, and doesn't really care.

"The publicity is great, of course, but we truly did it because it was so much fun. We're a family of cooks but we've never gone head-to-head to cook before," Wilson says. "It far exceeded my expectations in every single aspect.

Is more TV in his future? While Wilson isn't ruling it out, he's also not holding his breath, waiting for the phone to ring.

"I love to do [more TV]," he says, and then begins chuckling. "But, I don't know if I have the personality to do it."

Contact Patricia Talorico at (302) 324-2861 or ptalorico@delawareonline.com and on Twitter @pattytalorico

IF YOU WATCH:

WHAT: Gretchen, Chip, Taylor and Wilson Gates are a Delaware family of chefs who will be competing on the culinary competition TV series "Guy's Grocery Games" hosted by celebrity chef Guy Fieri. The family owns the Lewes restaurants The Buttery and The Gate House of Lewes. 

WHEN: 8 p.m. July 9

WHERE: Food Network

INFORMATION: foodnetwork.com/shows/guys-grocery-games