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" The season-nine premiere of Top Chef, on Wednesday night, is doing things a little differently: This time around, the competition will start with 29 &amp;quot;hopefuls,&amp;quot; who will be quickly cut down to 16. One of those contestants is Chuy Valencia, the 25-year-old chef and co-owner of Chicago&amp;#039;s Chilam Balam and an alumnus of Rick Bayless&amp;#039;s acclaimed Mexican-food empire. We talked to him about what it&amp;#039;s like to cook in front of a TV crew, meeting Padma for the first time, and returning to his humble-sized Midwestern kitchen. PLUS: Stay Tuned for John Mariani on Top Chef Right Here &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; I auditioned for Top Chef a few months before opening my restaurant, Chilam Balam. It was really before I knew the restaurant was an actual possibility. After they expressed some interest and said, &amp;quot;Hey, we want you to come for a second interview,&amp;quot; I was like, &amp;quot;Now I can&amp;#039;t.&amp;quot; It got put off. Then they were sending e-mails about casting several months ago. This time around, it was a lot easier, because the restaurant is much more manageable. I&amp;#039;ve got a good staff. The application is just a lot of paperwork and answering questions about your culinary background \u2014 who you&amp;#039;ve worked with, who you admire, where you&amp;#039;re from, what kind of food interests you, what chefs you don&amp;#039;t like. It&amp;#039;s almost like interviewing for a job, I guess. The show had honestly been something I was trying to avoid, but a lot of people had told me I was the perfect fit for it. My last boss, the owner at the restaurant I worked at before opening my restaurant [Adobo Grill] \u2014 he was all about it. He was actually the one who put me in touch with Bravo in the first place. I was like, &amp;quot;If you guys are going to pay me while I&amp;#039;m gone, that&amp;#039;s fine.&amp;quot; My personality is bigger than what my body actually is. That casting video was a little bit overboard, actually. I&amp;#039;d been watching some English soccer beforehand, so I got a little carried away drinking some pints before that. Usually I&amp;#039;m a little more tame than that.      I&amp;#039;d only been to Texas passing through. When I was in culinary school, if we had two or three days off in a row, we&amp;#039;d just go to Mexico and party. You&amp;#039;re kind of broke in culinary school, so you make the most of your money in Mexico, I guess. I&amp;#039;ll tell you one thing: It&amp;#039;s hot in Texas. It was crazy, like a hundred-and-something degrees every day. It was a bit much to deal with. It was my second time meeting Padma, though I&amp;#039;m sure she doesn&amp;#039;t remember me. I met her and Tom [Colicchio] at the James Beard Awards in 2007 when I worked at Frontera [Grill] and we won Outstanding Restaurant in the U.S. that year. That&amp;#039;s the big one. Naturally, everyone wants to come out and congratulate you, and it was Rick [Bayless], our chef de cuisine, and two of our other sous chefs. It was a small group that came from Chicago, but we totally had the night of our lives. I don&amp;#039;t even think I was 21 when this happened. Two years before that, I was in and out of every restaurant back in Sonoma County, where I grew up, doing everything from French food to short-order line cook at a breakfast place. I was always one of those guys on the couch watching Top Chef going, &amp;quot;What the fuck are you doing? You have no idea. That&amp;#039;s so stupid.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s kind of like anything else. You&amp;#039;re watching Jeopardy and you know all the answers, but as soon as you get the clicker in your hand and Alex Trebek is looking at you, you freeze up. Being around a lot of talented people like that, it sort of skews you to think that maybe your learning isn&amp;#039;t done yet, that there are a lot of things left to strive for. And it&amp;#039;s such a competitive industry that we&amp;#039;re in, and a lot of these things are tied to your emotions. How good your food tastes is how good you&amp;#039;re going to feel about yourself. It kind of emotionally screws with you a bit, but it also motivates you to think, &amp;quot;I can do better. I can do a better job on that concept. I can write a better menu. I can be a better boss.&amp;quot; You get people who do molecular gastronomy. You get people who do very cultural kinds of cuisine. You get people who do counter service or fine dining and everything in between. It&amp;#039;s cool to get a bit of everybody&amp;#039;s viewpoint. I have strong feelings towards food, but being in the competition makes you think, &amp;quot;Wow, I&amp;#039;m a huge food person, but am I a chef or just a food admirer?&amp;quot; Even somebody of my skill set now \u2014 a lot of people think you&amp;#039;re so young and accomplished. I&amp;#039;m only 25, and what if I reached my potential two years ago and I&amp;#039;m just at a standstill? It makes you think a lot about your future and ways to keep being competitive and innovative. It enforces the idea that you&amp;#039;re never through learning as a chef, or as anything for that matter. \u2014as told to Paul Schrodt PLUS: Stay Tuned for John Mariani on Top Chef Right Here &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/food/a11546/top-chef-season-9-preview-6538830/>