Q&A: How a Myrtle Beach restaurant took home a winner’s prize on ‘Chef Swap at the Beach’

Winna’s Kitchen chef Jess Sagun took home a winning prize from the Cooking Channel’s “Chef Swap on the Beach” competition earlier this month.

The competition took place in downtown Myrtle Beach, where two local chefs were invited to compete against each other for a panel of judges. There was a catch — the two chefs were forced to cook in each other’s kitchen rather than their own.

After creating a pork breakfast meatball with a rosemary caramel sauce, Sagun took home the winning prize, a special knife.

The episode aired on Oct. 1. The Sun News sat down with Sagun to learn about her experience on the show.

Question: How did you feel when you found out you won?

Answer: My dad used to say this, I lack the killer instinct. When we play board games, or cards, I always feel bad for who doesn’t win. I mean, I was proud for us. I was really proud for my daughter, because I didn’t want to disappoint her. And I think she was happier than I was. I was happy, it felt affirming.

She runs the restaurant. I get to do the fun stuff. I get to do the interviews and go on TV and talk about the restaurant and come up with concepts and that kind of stuff. But she’s the one in the kitchen day after day after day after day making it happen. And she has five kids that she home-schools. She’s a phenomenal human. She’s good people.

Q: Walk us through those 48 hours after you found out you would be on the show.

A: I knew the idea was to put you up in a kitchen that you make kind of the same thing, but in a different setting. I knew it had to be a breakfast place or a lunch place. I just started to brainstorm some ideas, like ‘what can I do?’ Nothing. Because anything I would brainstorm up we already had on our menu. So I was just like, I’m gonna wing it.

You had to bring a special ingredient. We use fresh herbs in everything around here, so that was my special ingredient.

Q: You said you ‘winged it.’ How did you come up with that recipe on the spot?

A: I was like ‘what’s something we could put on a menu that could be dinner-y but also breakfast?’ I was looking for a main ingredient, a really high-quality ingredient that I could use as a base. I saw they had this sausage called wampler. So I was like, ‘this is a product I could really transform.’

I knew in my mind, I had the flavor profile I wanted to go for. And so I just whipped it up. I love to cook on the fly, it drives other people crazy.

Q; How did your husband react to seeing you on screen?

A: My husband, he thinks I’m freaking awesome. We’ve been married 25 years and he has this overinflated view of me. I swear, the longer we’re married the better he likes me. I don’t know where that came from, but I’m thankful for it.

Q: What about the rest of your family and friends?

A: I’m always doing something that they are like, ‘she what?’ I’m not gonna say they’re proud, but none of them are surprised. They were just like, ‘that’s what she’s doing.’ Not because I’m awesome, but because I’m crazy.

Q: Tell me about starting Winna’s Kitchen a year ago.

A: My mom passed away two years ago. It t just really kind of triggered this thing in us that said, we don’t want to live with a bunch of regret. And this was something we had always wanted to do. We had a pet peeve about not having a breakfast place we love. We live a couple of blocks over, and so we felt like we wanted to invest in our community and at the same time live a life of no regrets.

Q: Where did you learn to cook?

A: I was raised largely by my grandparents and my mom, I was a Gen X kid. My granddad would grow. He had a greenhouse in his backyard. He was always growing something, everything had to come out of the ground. They love natural food. They were really influential in a way. And my other grandparents, my grandma was a real country cook. Lots of ham hocks, fat backs and biscuits, that kind of thing.

Q: What kind of impact has the show had on you?

A: People say this all the time, when you work in a field where everyone else has had formal training, it feels good to be affirmed. I would say the highlight for was making a lot of food for B roll of the show. And Arian Duarte was the culinary director of the show, she’s on Top Chef. She was like ‘this is hands down the best shrimp and grits I’ve ever had.’

They were very, very, very encouraging. It’s so encouraging.

What’s next for Chef Swap at the Beach?

The show is expected to finish out the six-episode series and will possibly be renewed for a second season.

Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce CEO Karen Riordan said officials are in talks with The Cooking Channel to renew the show for another season with a new slate of restaurant owners.

”It’s a 30-minute commercial for Myrtle Beach and it’s doing exactly what we hoped it to do, which is elevate the more than 2,000 restaurants that we have on the Grand Strand and show people that we are the beach and we are golf but we also have an unbelievably diverse and delicious culinary scene,” she told the Myrtle Beach city council Oct. 11.

“Chef Swap at the Beach” put out a second episode on Oct. 8, where host Amanda Freitag challenged restaurant chefs from Myrtle Beach’s Ciao and Drift to a lunch competition. The first season will have six episodes in total.