CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. —
Charlottetown’s Lucy Morrow is a young chef with a can’t-stop, won’t-stop attitude.
There is nowhere she feels more at home than the kitchen, running on adrenaline, refusing to stop until she gets it just right.
Islanders will soon get to see her strut her stuff when she debuts as one of the competitors on Food Network Canada’s reality show, Top Chef Canada’. The competition begins on Monday, April 13, at 11 p.m. ADT.
Morrow, originally from Lunenburg, N.S., is one of 12 chefs competing in the show and is the first Islander to compete on the program in its eight seasons.
“There is nothing like the Top Chef Canada kitchen. It’s bananas," Morrow said when asked how pumped she is.
“It’s decked out with top-of- the-line equipment, pretty much anything you can imagine, it’s there. There’s all this cool stuff that you normally don’t have access to."
The show was filmed in Toronto in October. Understandably, she is sworn to secrecy on how she did and what the ultimate outcome was.
However, Morrow was more interested in focusing on the competitive nature of the show anyway, explaining that she was in her element.
“Oh, I’m ridiculously competitive," she says when asked how she fit in.
“Everything is a competition to me. I’ve done quite a few competitions. I really love competing."
The 27-year-old chef said she’s always felt at home in the kitchen, often helping out her mother.
After graduating from high school, she briefly attended Mount Allison University before realizing, “this isn’t for me". When her boyfriend said he was enrolling at Holland College, she decided to apply to the Culinary Institute of Canada. That’s when things started clicking for her.
Following graduation, she spent a few years at the Row House in Charlottetown where she took over as executive chef before moving on to the Terre Rouge where she spent the next four years. She’s unemployed at the moment but says she has plans.
She does have a couple of impressive facts to put on her resume — she has cooked for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and was named one of Canada’s top up-and-coming chefs by The Globe and Mail.
Some of Lucy Morrow’s favourite things to eat include:
- Raw seafood, especially scallops
- Fried rice
- Sushi
- Homemade cinnamon rolls
- Extra thin crust pizza
- Blueberry pie
- Frozen fruit
As for Top Chef Canada, a producer reached out to her on Instagram one day and suggested she apply.
Her reaction was instantaneous — “I was like ‘let’s go’."
The pressure on the set was intense, she said.
“It’s as dramatic as any other reality show you see on TV. There’s like 30 (production crew) all there, and the judges are just staring at you for a minute and a half (before revealing a person’s fate). Your heart is just pounding. It’s insane.’’
It’s been hard for Morrow to stay quiet about the show – and her fate, but she was proud to have represented P.E.I. She teased that there are a couple of P.E.I.-related challenges on the show as well.
As for what the exposure could do for her career, Morrow said it will give her more visibility, and she is happy people will be able to see what she can do. But her takeaway is what competing on the program did for her personally.
“It was important for me to prove to myself to see how I could do and to see how I stack up against other chefs in the country at such a high level."
She learned to trust herself more in the kitchen – to be bolder and take risks.
“I feel a connection with food. I love the process of it. I love being able to turn something into something else with my hands and for people to relate to it."
