Chef Wanted With Anne Burrell - Sea Dog Update

Tomorrow's episode of Chef Wanted with Anne Burrell will be looking to hire a new chef at Sea Dog Steak & Ale, in Northborough, Massachusetts, which is right outside of Boston.  The four contestants on this episode are Nathan Hartman, Amie Hurd, Paul Scheffler, and Amanda Pavone.  I will not spend too much time on the chef's backgrounds due to the update after the jump, which could be a spoiler depending on the person.

• Amie Hurd -  the executive chef at Mojo's and The Exchange, both in Portsmouth, NH.

• Nathan Hartman - a sous chef at Public 612 in Los Angeles, California

• Paul Scheffler - chef de cuisine at Park West Tavern in Ridgewood, NJ

• Amanda Pavone - a sous chef at The Daily Catch in Quincy, MA

The Sea Dog Steak & Ale actually CLOSED in early December.  I would say the producers of the show didn't do a good job scouting this restaurant.  The restaurant has a lot of bad reviews on review sites, and the reviews average out to about a 3 out of 5 stars.

Here is a quick timeline of recent events at The Sea Dog Steak & Ale:

• After a July 19th health inspection, The Sea Dog was shut down for a day due to cockroaches and 8 other health code violations including "improper thawing of food - a container of raw haddock on top of a container of raw scallops thawing in the sink, the water in dishwasher not being hot enough, old and stale-looking food in a fridge, expired egg yolks, and storing raw chicken in a cooler above cooked soup." (Metro West Daily News)

• Chef Wanted with Anne Burrell filmed at the Sea Dog in the middle of September

• The Sea Dog closed at the beginning of December.

The owners of the Sea Dog are still evaluating if they want to reopen the restaurant, but if they do, they will most likely open under a new brand, and a new name.  This may have been a case of a restaurant trying to use the free publicity of a TV show to bring more attention and business to their restaurant.  You would think they would at least try to stay open until their episode aired.

I do not know if the winning chef of this episode actually worked there at all, but hopefully they didn't, as it would have only been for a few months.

FYI (Spoiler for the episode) - The casting site for Chef Wanted has Amie Hurd listed as the winner of this episode, so she is the one expected to win.

Finally, Chef Wanted is moving to Sunday Nights after this week, so another new episode will be airing this Sunday along with the season 4 premiere episode of Worst Cooks In America.